For over 14 years, photographer Dane Shitagi has been photographing beautiful, strong, and powerful women dancing all over New York City.
This is not your run of the mill catalog dance photography. The juxtaposition of the incredible strength of the dancers' bodies plus a seemingly devoid urban landscape creates a captivating visual experience.
The Tumblr page for the Ballerina Project explains the high caliber of talent used in these photographs:
The majority of ballerinas who have posed for the project are currently or have danced for companies such as American Ballet Theater, Boston Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Dresden Semperopera Ballet, Tulsa Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Suzanne Farrell Ballet, Ballet West, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet.
When social media emerged, Shitagi took advantage, creating pages for his photo series on Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Twitter. Currently, it is the largest dance photography page on Facebook with 850,000 "likes" and its Instagram account has about 500,000 followers.
"Much of the project has been photographed on traditional film and cameras," Shitagi explains on Tumblr. "Only as of the late Spring 2012 the project has begun to incorporate digital photography for a portion of our latest images."