A Dancer’s Box
Welded Metal Sculpture
4’ x 10’ x 10’
2025
This piece emerged from my complex relationship with dance, symbolizing both the physical box a dancer balances on in pointe shoes and the metaphorical box we exist in, defined by front, back, 90, and 45-degree angles that are drilled into us from our earliest ballet training.
I chose to impale the abstracted pointe shoe on a large spike. I wrap it in suffocating pointe shoe ribbons and elastics and then tie the ribbon off in the proper way around the “ankle” to express the beauty and pain inherent in ballet. The 17 pointe shoe needles and threads represent my age when I quit, after 13 years of dance. I purposefully left the “ankle” or metal rods exposed, to show both the fragility and strength of a dancer's ankle.
While unintended, the holes along the spike from repeated welding and grinding perfectly capture the wear and tear on a dancer's body through constant, strenuous training. I discovered striking parallels between my pursuit of perfection in dance, which led to hip surgery at 15, and my perfectionist approach to welding this piece. To emphasize this contrast between external beauty and internal pain, I polished only the shoe's exterior, leaving its interior raw and rough.
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