Beauty out of Chaos in Elegant Dance Film for BalletMet

Creative content studio Lair and director Steven Weinzierl recently collaborated with professional dance company BalletMet on a special video project released today titled “Becoming Violet” that explores the beauty of visual arts through anatomy, sounds, dance, and color. Featuring six BalletMet dancers against a black backdrop, the film showcases their elegant movements with crisp detail, stylized slow-motion, and colorful bursts of chalk that seem to originate from the dancers themselves. You can check out the film here or below.

“The spot is about unity and the fusion of human and abstract elements,” comments Weinzierl. “We take the viewer through a journey of emotions: X vs. Y, good vs. bad, love vs. hate. Ultimately it all concludes with an abstract representation of these opposing elements bonding. It is a celebration of dance and film in its rawest form.”

One of Lair’s primary goals for the project was to make ballet appealing to a younger, more modern audience who might otherwise disregard the art form or not be introduced to it altogether.

The film embodies Weinzierl’s signature style: content that makes the viewer feel, that is music-driven, and that is saturated in dramatic and beautiful design. It was shot using a Phantom Flex High-Speed Digital Camera, capable of shooting 500 frames a second -- rendering motion 20 times slower than typical slow motion -- that heightens both movement and light sensitivity.

The colored chalk in particular is important to the film as it emphasizes the dancers’ motions and extends their movements through space, especially in slow motion. Weinzierl explains: “We needed something that represented otherworldliness, that was about the abstract sensation of sexual tension. The color became an abstract extension of the dancers, and the use of the dust best visualized two elements coming together and bringing something into existence without overcomplicating it or relying on verbal cues.”

BalletMet Artistic Director Edwaard Liang remarked: “We were so fortunate to be able to collaborate with Lair on this incredible project, and we couldn’t be happier with the outcome. Becoming Violet is a beautiful interpretation of what it means to find release in creative exploration, to come together in the name of art.”