of Salome Pressac
Salome Pressac is an extraordinary dance artist who I was introduced to in the summer of 2022 when she was performing Andrea Miller’s powerful creation “Blush” for the Gallim Dance Company.
She has had an inspiring and challenging journey in her young and rapidly evolving life journey.
She began her formal training in ballet, a far cry culturally (and travel distance) from the hard scrabble neighborhood she grew up in – starting her formal training at the Central School of Ballet Associates, followed by the English National Ballet Youth Company and the Royal Ballet Associates, where she was not only one of the very few dancers of colour, but also a rapidly rising star.
She had her first taste of contemporary dance in 2014 at the Centre for Advanced Training Scheme at The Place, and was accepted from there into the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance.
After graduating from the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance, she was one of 13 dancers to be selected from 800 auditionees for Rambert2 (the youth division of the prestigious company), and by 20 she landed the plumb job as a member of the main Rambert company, performing works by Sidi Larbi Charkaoui and Ohad Naharin.
But two years into what many dancers would have seen as the beginning of a long career with a top ranked dance company Salome decided to quit to pursue broader and more diverse opportunities as a freelance artist.
Meeting with Salome you can feel the strength of her free spirit and heart beating.
She clearly listens acutely, and viscerally, to her inner artist’s voice, and her broader ambitions, and acts on them – with intention but also instinctively.
That raw, untamed, delicate and ferocious artistry is beautiful to behold, and provided me with a goldmine of emotions to capture in these portraits.
It was a privilege working with Salome, and I hope you see her as clearly as I did in creating this series of images with her.
