Dance

Subterms

    Latest story

    125 Shares19 Views

    Spirituality, Nature, and Performance Converge in Victoria Ruiz’s Vibrant Photographs

    by

    All images © Victoria Ruiz, shared with permission

    Spirituality, Nature, and Performance Converge in Victoria Ruiz’s Vibrant Photographs

    July 15, 2025

    ArtPhotography

    Kate Mothes

    Share

    Pin

    Email

    Bookmark

    “For me, costume has always been part of everything,” says photographer and multidisciplinary artist Victoria Ruiz. “Culturally, I grew up in Venezuela seeing costume not as something separate from daily life but as something deeply embedded in it, especially through the lens of carnival. Carnival is in our blood. It’s not just a festival; it’s a way of expressing history, resistance, joy, and grief. A costume, at the end of the day, is something you wear that tells a story.”

    In striking, saturated images, Ruiz channels a fascination with nature, dance, spirituality, and African diasporic religion. Citing belief systems of the Americas like Santería-Ifá, Candomblé, Umbanda, and Espiritismo, the artist delves into the histories and cultural resonance of religion as modes of resistance and adaptation. These faiths often blend “African spiritual traditions with Indigenous and colonial influences,” she says in a statement.

    Currently based in London, Ruiz draws upon her childhood experiences in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, where she and her family encountered both nuanced ancestral practices and urgent political violence. “I grew up surrounded by characters, some from folkloric traditions, others from more disturbing scenes like military or police repression,” the artist tells Colossal. She continues:

    I realized early on that uniforms are also costumes. What people wore during those moments of violence or protest created powerful symbols. It was a kind of dark carnival. And I became very curious about what those garments meant and how they could inspire fear, power, or solidarity.

    In her series Para Tú Altar: Las Fuerzas Divinas de la Naturaleza, which translates to For Your Altar: The Divine Forces of Nature, Ruiz draws upon a seminal music album by Cuban salsa artist Celia Cruz, who incorporated ceremonial Santería music into one of her early albums. Para Tú Altar references one of Cruz’s songs about different types of flowers used to honor the divinity of nature.

    At the time, African diasporic religions like Santería, in which Yoruba traditions, Catholicism, and Spiritism converge, were largely hidden from view due to widespread prejudice and marginalization. Ruiz adds, “It could be said that Celia did not truly understand that what she was doing at the time was transcendent for Cuba’s musical culture and the religion itself.”

    Music and performance are central tenets in Ruiz’s work. Since she was young, she studied ballet, flamenco, and contemporary dance, but it was only when she moved to London and began collaborating with dancers that elements of her practice began to truly gel. “Seeing them embody the costumes—activating them with movement and intention—transformed my whole practice,” she says. “It became a way to make the pieces alive and to create immersive, emotional storytelling.”

    Ruiz works with a range of fabrics and materials like faux flowers and other props, depending on the theme of the series. She often reuses the costumes to emphasize sustainability. “Each costume and each image is a portal to the divine; it is a visual offering, a spiritual invocation,” Ruiz says. “They’re my own interpretations of how these forces have shaped and protected me. I’m still on that journey, and this work is a kind of gratitude, a love letter to those unseen powers that have carried me.”

    The artist is currently working on a series of protective masks, drawing on the ingenuity of handmade masks used during protests that Ruiz witnessed while living in Caracas. “At one point, gas masks were actually banned from entering the country, so people responded with creativity and survival instinct creating masks from water bottles, cardboard, even stuffed animals,” she says. “I found it so powerful: this creativity in the face of danger—this need to resist and survive through making.”

    See more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

    Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

    Hide advertising

    Save your favorite articles

    Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

    Receive members-only newsletter

    Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

    Join us today!

    $7/month

    $75/year

    Explore membership options

    Previous articleNext article More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Art

      Watch the Brilliant Ballet that Brought Dance to the Bauhaus Movement

      by

      From a performance by the Bavarian Junior Ballet

      Watch the Brilliant Ballet that Brought Dance to the Bauhaus Movement

      March 3, 2025

      ArtDesignFilmHistory

      Grace Ebert

      Share

      Pin

      Email

      Bookmark

      Given the emphasis on functionality and design for industrial production, the Bauhaus movement is rarely associated with disciplines like dance. But for Oskar Schlemmer (1888-1943), translating its principles into movement and performance was as compelling as a well-conceived chair or building.

      In the last century, the Bauhaus has indelibly shaped our modern built environments and the ways we think of the relationship between form and function (it even inspired conceptual cookbooks). German architect Walter Gropius founded the school in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, with the intention of uniting architecture, fine arts, and crafts. The school focused on minimalism and creating for the social good and involved artists and designers like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, László Moholy-Nagy, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Anni and Josef Albers.

      Costume designs for the ‘Triadic Ballet.’ Courtesy of Harvard Art Museums

      The Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop, Schlemmer was a painter, sculptor, and choreographer responsible for the under-known Triadic Ballet, a striking, playful dance structured around groups of three. Debuted in 1922, the avant-garde production comprises three colors—yellow, pink or white, and black—and three costume shapes—the square, circle, and triangle.

      “Building on multiples of three,” says an explanation from MoMA, “transcended the egotism of the individual and dualism of the couple, emphasizing the collective.”

      In true Bauhaus form, the idea was to eliminate the decorative frills associated with ballet, including tutus that allow bodies to bend, twist, and explore a full range of mobility. Instead, Schlemmer’s costumes restrict movement and add a modern quality as dancers appear stifled and almost mechanical, a nod to the movement’s focus on accessibility through mass production and turning “art into industry.”

      Several of Schlemmer’s illustrations for the ballet are available online, including his bizarre sculptural costume designs with wide, bubbly skirts and vibrantly striped sleeves. MoMA’s collections contain a print titled “Figures in Space,” which reveals one of the performance’s foremost preoccupations: how bodies move and interact in space.

      As seen in a fully colorized film of the dance from the 1970s, the dancers are incredibly deliberate as they navigate sparse sets with clean lines. Open Culture notes that they appear almost like pantomimes or puppets “with figures in awkward costumes tracing various shapes around the stage and each other.”

      A few years back, Great Big Story created a video visiting the Bavarian Junior Ballet as it prepared for a performance. The costumes are faithful to Schlemmer’s vision and retain the rigid geometries and bright palettes. As noted by director Ivan Liška, the strange attire combined with the jilted, robotic choreography often leaves the audience laughing. “It’s very successful because the audience can’t believe this is 100 years old,” he says. “There you see the visionary power of Oskar Schlemmer.”

      Triadic Ballet is rarely reproduced, but Bavarian Junior Ballet will bring the work back to the stage this June to celebrate its 15th anniversary. And if you’re in New York, you can see one of Schlemmer’s studies in Living in the Age of the Machine at MoMA. It’s also worth exploring The Oskar Schlemmer Theatre Estate and Archives, which boasts a trove of archival imagery and drawings on its website.

      From a performance by the Bavarian Junior Ballet

      Some of the original costumes

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

      Hide advertising

      Save your favorite articles

      Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

      Receive members-only newsletter

      Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

      Join us today!

      $7/month

      $75/year

      Explore membership options

      Next article More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Art

      CDK Company Makes Moves Through a Contemporary Art Museum to Billie Eilish’s ‘Bittersuite’

      by

      All images courtesy of CDK Company

      CDK Company Makes Moves Through a Contemporary Art Museum to Billie Eilish’s ‘Bittersuite’

      February 26, 2025

      ArtMusic

      Kate Mothes

      Share

      Pin

      Email

      Bookmark

      Championing the next generation of dancers in The Netherlands, CDK Company (previously) has made a name for itself through large-scale interpretations of pop music involving numerous dancers in playful, themed outfits. For the group’s latest video, director and choreographer Sergio Reis and team took on Billie Eilish’s “Bittersuite” from her 2024 album Hit Me Hard and Soft.

      Set among paintings and installations in Museum Voorlinden, three dozen performers don pastel garments evocative of 1960s fashion, all wearing identical dark, bowl cut wigs.

      Whether moving through a gallery of paintings by Michaël Borremans, stationed inside a 4-meter-high Corten steel sculpture by Richard Serra, or synchronizing around the edge of Leandro Erlich’s “Swimming Pool,” CDK leads us on a vibrant, emotive journey through Eilish’s music and the museum’s art collection.

      Find more on CDK’s website and dance along to more videos on Reis’s YouTube channel.

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

      Hide advertising

      Save your favorite articles

      Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

      Receive members-only newsletter

      Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

      Join us today!

      $7/month

      $75/year

      Explore membership options

      Previous articleNext article More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Art

      Dances and Branches: Colossal’s Most-Read Stories of 2021

      by

      
      Art
      Dance
      History
      PhotographyDecember 29, 2021ColossalWe spent the last year collaborating with creatives from every corner of the planet to publish nearly 700 articles and interviews that range from art, design, and photography to science and history. As we plan our coverage for 2022, we’re looking back at some of the stories you read most (thank you!). And in case you missed it, make sure you check out Colossal’s favorite short films and books from 2021, too.Nine Massive Waves of Deadwood Surge Across a Forest Floor Near HamburgBetween November 2020 and March 2021, Jörg Gläscher gathered deadwood and constructed nine massive crests that overwhelm the forest floor in undulating layers of branches and twigs.Mammoth Straw Creatures Populate Japanese Farmland in the Annual Wara Art FestivalEnormous tarantulas, eagles, and dinosaur-like creatures occupy Japan’s Niigata Prefecture as part of the Wara Art Festival, a summertime event that displays massive animals and mythical creations fashioned from the rice crop’s leftover straw.An Intimate Photographic Series Glimpses the Lives of the Children Who Fish in Ghana’s Lake VoltaPhotographer Jeremy Snell unveils the more sinister side of Ghana’s Lake Volta through an intimate and profound series documenting the lives of the children working in the region.‘Beneath the Bird Feeder’ Documents the Spectacular Wildlife Visiting a Wintertime Food SourceDuring the winter months of late 2020 into early 2021, Carla Rhodes photographed a diverse cast of cold-weather adventurers, including a brilliant northern cardinal, numerous pairs of mourning doves, and furry little field mice, that visited her birdfeeder.Impasto Marks and Thick Dabs of Paint Render Dreamy Landscapes in Rich Layers of ColorRussian artist Anastasia Trusova works in a style she terms “textured graphic impressionism” that involves deftly layering acrylic paints into lush foliage, clouds, and fields of wildflowers.A Restored Vermeer Painting Reveals a Hidden Cupid Artwork Hanging in the Background2021 changed the way we understand a 17th-century painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. What was once thought to be a somewhat glum depiction of a young girl was revealed to be an amorous portrayal complete with a naked Cupid in the background.Cheeky Busts by Gerard Mas Are Sculpted with a Contemporary TwistThe women artist Gerard Mas sculpts are spirited and unconventional as they blow a wad of bubblegum, sport visible tan lines, or unabashedly dig in their noses. Each corset-clad figure is steeped in humor and wit as it casts a contemporary light on the traditional form.Herds of Life-Sized Elephants Roam Through London’s Parks for a Global Conservation ProjectSixty migrating elephants passed between Piccadilly and Buckingham Palace in London’s Green Park earlier this year as one of nine herds roaming throughout the city. The lumbering creatures are part of a collaboration that explores how humans can better live alongside animals.Ceramic Mosaics Mend Cracked Sidewalks, Potholes, and Buildings in Vibrant Interventions by EmememThroughout his home city of Lyon, Ememem is known as “the pavement surgeon” because he repairs gouged sidewalks with colorful mosaics.A Mesmerizing Dance Performance for the Paralympics Hand-Off Ceremony Choreographed by Sadeck WaffAs part of a closing hand-off ceremony for the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games, choreographer Sadeck Waff worked with 128 performers in a dizzying performance focused on arms and hands.Chicago’s Manual Cinema Reveals How Its Shadow Puppets Became a Defining Feature of the New ‘Candyman’Nia DaCosta’s Candyman is deeply rooted in Chicago’s history and draws in local artists, like the talented team at Manual Cinema. Colossal editor-in-chief Christopher Jobson interviewed co-artistic director Drew Dir when the film was released to discuss the unprecedented process of using shadow puppets in a blockbuster live-action film, experimenting with the technical limits of the medium, and conveying a story of racism and trauma.Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member and support independent arts publishing. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about contemporary art, help support our interview series, gain access to partner discounts, and much more. Join now! Share this story  More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Art

      Bronze Figures Explore Movement in Sculptures by Coderch & Malavia

      by

      
      Art
      Dance

      #body
      #bronze
      #sculpture

      January 5, 2021
      Grace Ebert

      “Clio’s Dream” (2020), bronze and blue patina. All images © Coderch & Malavia, shared with permission
      At the center of Coderch & Malavia’s artistic practice is the beauty of the human figure and its various expressions. The Valencia-based duo works collaboratively to cast bronze sculptures that explore the nuances of the body through dance-like movements and distinct gestures. Natural details like golden branches and feathered wings embellish many of the heavily patinaed works, Coderch & Malavia share, to evoke themes from classic literature, theater, photography, cinema, and ballet. “The human being is three-dimensional,” they say. “Probably that is the main reason why we are attracted to sculpture. It is the closest artistic representation of ourselves.”
      After a discussion on intentions for a new project, the pair generally works with a live model to help the sculpture take shape. “The complicated part is organizing and sharing the physical creation of the work itself because you need double discipline,” they say. “You must learn to trust your partner and be able to share your ideas and your work with him, and, above all, you must put your ego aside in order to stay equal to commit to the final result.”
      Get a glimpse into Coderch & Malavia’s process on their site and Instagram, where you can also follow their upcoming exhibitions.

      Detail of “Clio’s Dream” (2020), bronze and blue patina
      Detail of “Haiku” (2019), bronze
      Detail of “Haiku” (2019), bronze
      “Moonlight Shadow” (2019), bronze, 80 centimeters
      “Odette” (2018), bronze, 68 centimeters
      Detail of “Moonlight Shadow” (2019), bronze, 80 centimeters
      Detail of “Odette” (2018), bronze, 68 centimeters
      “Haiku” (2019), bronze

      #body
      #bronze
      #sculpture

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member and support independent arts publishing. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about contemporary art, help support our interview series, gain access to partner discounts, and much more. Join now!

       
      Share this story
        More