This site is an exploration of how basic ballet exercises might be represented or explored through the repetitive movements that are familiar to us from navigating the web.

How might a scroll, a click, a slider make us imagine, experience, or intuit a movement?

It was made by Maxwell Neely-Cohen in November 2020 as a way to learn the basics of web art.

Most of the images were scanned and remixed from a 1952 edition of The Classic Ballet, published by Alfred K. Knopf, and originally illustrated by Carlus Dyer.

To begin, simply start playing music, and then navigate through the different exercises.

I started taking remote ballet classes during the COVID-19 pandemic, a complete novice at 34 years old. I assembled a barre in my apartment and learned basic movements through the medium of a laptop screen, guided by distant voices resynthesized in my isolated space. My body had never moved that way before, never stretched or held or tried to flow while still freezing, extending and contracting to form unknown shapes and boundaries.

This site was created as part of Fruitful School’s Fall 2020 session, with great assistance from instructors Laurel Schwulst and John Provencher, and fellow classmates Alisa Blakeney, Anna Bialas, Anya Khalaj, Ilona Altman, Jarret Bryan, Ji Kim, Kyle Richardson, Mariyamu Namakanda, Naomi Moser, Raegan Bird, Sharon Zhong, Simone Robert, Siri Lee, Tee Topor, and Vanya Padmanabhan.