Celebrated American born Indian Bharatnatyam dancer, Justin McCarthy explores the intrinsic connection between a dancer and the cloth. Beguiled by the beauty of the way a
sari is draped around the waist, he believes the cloth reflects the way a dancer holds his body.
Brian collaborates with New York-based photographer Briana Blasco, who explores this very connection through a visual medium in her book, '
Dance of the Weave' where she mediates the link between a dancer and the drape. As a photographer who spent years documenting dance photography, her trips to India helped her understand the Indian textiles and thereby capture the same through her lens.
Briana travelled to Tamil Nadu in order to document the process of Indigo making. The photographs reveal a deep appreciation for the arts and crafts of Indian textiles and dance. She spent five years researching for the book, visiting dance schools and interacting with dancers and visiting weaving villages. Captivated by the extravagant beauty of the endless dance forms across India, Briana says she wanted to focus on the classical and folk dance forms -- "I think it has definitely increased my interest in textiles".
The book explores the myriad dance forms of India, each one depicting a different story and an emotion of its own. In her journey of documenting the process of making Indigo, Briana discovered the art of using the human body in the process of making a colour.
Justin McCarthy echoes her thought as he feels that it is not only the relationship between the dancer and the cloth, but also the people who make the cloth. "The movement of people in those Indigo wells...it was that intermingling and that juxtaposition which I found very beautiful". He was overwhelmed by the work of Briana as she managed to narrate the story through her photographs sequenced in an artistic manner.