Butterflies

Setting aside the risk of sentimentality, I started Butterflies as a rapid, gestural sketch in pen and ink. The intention was to explore the movement of a group of figures as a whole.  Although the group of dancers make the same movement at the same moment, they are not completely synchronized.  The succession of the movement reads from left to right to create the effect of a time-lapse in a single image. 

First, the rebound from the floor; second, the apex of the jump.  The third figure hovers like the butterfly she is imitating, with curved lines and her skirt and wings to describe the airborne feeling.  The fourth dancer shows the descent to the ground.  The changing incline of the heads describe the arc of their collective jump.  The gradation of dark to light, lighter in the direction of their movement, left to right helps guide an understanding of the direction of their movement.

The darkest tones tie the four figures together behind and below, gathering the four into a unit.  Overlapping the figures with tight spacing implies rapid movement.  If the figures were spaced further apart, the movement would seem slower. 

There’s a tension between an image of single moment in time, and the movement created by a cinematic sequence.  In this drawing, I learned that I can show a movement by overlapping figures in a sequence that describing movement through time in a single instant.