Bruce Turner - Pavlova

Bruce Turner's painting 'Pavlova' is a remarkable early modernist image of a dancer in motion painted in around 1912. I saw it yesterday in Tate Britain, where it is currently on display.



Don't know too much about Turner (1894-1963), but he was from Leeds and seemingly involved in the Leeds Art Club, an interesting avant garde grouping from before the First World War through which flowed various counter-currents including socialism, anarchism, spiritualism, suffragism and theosophy



Anna Pavlova made her sensational first appearance in London in 1910, and performed at the Leeds Grand on 17 January 1912 advertised as the 'dancing revelation of the age' (see Leeds Play Bills). Maybe Turner was there.

Laura Knight

Le Carnival

Tamara Karsavina of the Ballet Russes as the Firebird

Laura Knight (1887-1970) was a prolific painter of dancers and other performers in the ballet, circus and theatre. Lots more of her work here and here. Before the First World War, Knight was part of the artists' 'colony' that gathered in Lamorna, Cornwall - others included Samuel John "Lamorna" Birch, Alfred Munnings and Aleister Crowley.

Classic Party Scenes (7): Black Swan

Enjoyed Black Swan, a whole movie about dancing - what's not to like? If you've been living in a cave for the last month you might need to be told that it stars Natalie Portman as a ballet dancer struggling with her dark side as she prepares for the dual role of white swan/black swan in Swan Lake. Cue sex, drugs, blood and madness. All this and great eye make up!



It also has one of the best club scenes I've seen in a movie for a while, conveying a sense of messy, druggy dissociative intimacy on a dancefloor. It was apparently filmed in the Forum in Manhattan with soundtrack courtesy of The Chemical Brothers.

Weirder than anything in the film is the usual drivel on crazed conspiracy sites where David Icke acolytes ponder how the movie fits in to the supposed global/zionist/illuminati/Hollywood mind control plot. Apparently the movie teaches us to embrace our evil natures and commit ritual sacrifice. I don't dip into this stuff very often, and am not going to link to it, but needless to say much is made of the fact that Natalie Portman is.... shock horror... Jewish. There's a lenghthy obsessive post out there with the hilarious (but they're not joking) title Natalie Portman, Kabbalistic Kitten.