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Photo Gallery: 50 Years of the Ballet, By Colin Jones

by Ismene BrownThursday, 13 January 2011

1999: English National Ballet corps warm up in Hong Kong before 'Swan Lake'

All images © Colin Jones/Arenapal.com

Rudy and Margot do intensely serious barre in an Italian garden, Lynn Seymour enjoys a "Loyal Ballet" poster on a 1962 Japanese tour, in Glasgow two ballet girls snatch some rest in uncomfortable chairs. The real world of ballet, as shot by the insider who became a world photographer, Colin Jones. Read the interview with him, describing the friendships and tragic dramas behind the exhibition of 50 years of his ballet pictures at Proud Chelsea Gallery - events as turbulent as anything onstage.

All photographs © Colin Jones/Arenapal.com. Click on an image to enter full view and slideshow.

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1962: Margot Fonteyn and Rudolph Nureyev doing a class before performing Swan Lake at the Nervi Festival, Italy
1961: Ballerina Lynn Seymour on the Royal Ballet tour in Tokyo
1961: Ballet dancers waiting during rehearsals
1961: Shirley Grahame of the Royal Ballet Touring Company in Newcastle
1962: Performance
1962: Royal Ballet, Leeds
1961: Final curtain call in Tokyo for the Royal Ballet
1962: Royal Ballet Touring Company, Glasgow
1991: Northern Ballet Theatre, Leeds
1999: English National Ballet, Hong Kong

Fifty Years of the Ballet by Colin Jones is at the Proud Chelsea gallery 13 January-6 March
Read theartsdesk interview with Jones
Colin Jones's website

Dancers only want to look absolutely perfect in their pictures. To me that wasn't what it was about, it was about the physical work

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