48 Ballet Classes (2005)
Multi-channel digital video installation, 4:3, 3 h 5 min
Color photographs printed from 35mm slides

48 Ballet Classes is a conceptual documentary film and photography project documenting the artist’s experience of taking 48 consecutive ballet lessons over a three-month period in 2005 with Sonia Sarkis, former prima ballerina of the Cairo Ballet Company.

The process was recorded on 52 hours of video and later distilled into two edited versions: a three-hour cut and a one-hour cut. The work explores the aspiration and transformation involved in learning and assimilating unfamiliar movements, tracing the artist’s physical and mental adaptation to the formal vocabulary of classical ballet.

The photographic series accompanying the film was taken by Graham Waite.