Shadow Dancer | Original Drawing

By Sarah Wienberg

The title Shadow Dancer aims to tell a story of an unseen dance. It’s about uncovering parts of the shadow side of your psyche. It’s a daring to look into the dark to find your true self awakened and moving. I think a common theme for women can be keeping their strength incognito and creating a persona of helplessness in order to be “pleasing”. This dance is about banishing these “pleasing behaviours” and reclaiming the full expression of the authentic self. This gesture drawing portrays a ballet dancer in movement. She emerges in a blur of hurried strokes of charcoal. The smokey grey on textured watercolour paper reveals the urgency of its creation. There are strong marker lines wrapping around and across the figure underlining the sense of movement and energy captured in this work. The dancer reaches out to one side in an expressive, yet powerful move.