In addition to his famous fashion photographs, Jeanloup Sieff is well known for his reportage of the dancers of the French National Ballet at the Opéra de Paris. These resulted in his first bookJ’aime la Danse, published by Rencontres Lausanne in 1962 with text by dance critique Jean Laurent. Several of his pictures from this period appeared in Vogue in the 1960’s, highlighting strong physical features of the ballerinas as well as abstract delicacies of the opera environment. The resulting images mix reverence for the athletes with romantic, creative sensibilities towards their apparently effortless grace.
Jeanloup Sieff’s passion for photographing ballet dancers and theatre performers endured through the 1990’s resulting in a second publication in 1996.