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Helen Zhang

  1. World Body Mind
  2. The Unfamiliar Body
  3. En dedans-Giselle
  4. Future Unknown Exhibition
  5. Graphing Ballet
  6. Improvising Ballet
  7. The Empty “pagex”
  8. Sip
  9. L-L
  10. Don’t Touch My Body

Writings

︎︎︎helenjiayuzhang@gmail.com ︎︎︎zhangjiayu0829@126.com
@helen_jzhang
are.na/helen-zhang/my-fooood

Graphing Ballet

Riso-graph/Generative Book/Website/Poster
Size varies 7.3in*9.7in/27.58in*18.58in print
duo-cover/poster as book sleeve folded poster inserted
timeline as page number categorized in chapters on sleeve images of movement placement according to chapters' timeline
Graphing Ballet is a Riso-graph printed French folded book that visualizes a collection of deconstructed, progressive, and systematic ballet movement. The editorial system captures and utilizes the generative nature of ballet steps. Four chapters each contribute to a progressive ballet step from “Tendu”, “Degage”, to “Releve lent”, “Grand battement.” The height of the leg gradually lift up. By bringing this seemingly distant live art from on stage into visual book form, movement can be analyzed, interpreted, and recomposed in a manipulatable perspective.
digital archival experience: http://generative_books.hanabit.art/graphing_ballet
The page number is replaced by a general timeline representing a regular ballet technique class that last an hour and half.
Graphing Ballet presents the universal genre and charts its neglected movement system through visual language. The project is inspired by the repetitive and infinite ballet training. Movements gets more intensive every following chapter. The hardest steps on stage are all based on the smallest and fundamental tendu with the foot contacting the floor.
The system and essence of the ballet is often overlooked and misinterpreted. Graphing Ballet not only visualized the rational system of ballet, but also unseen objective anatomy of this elegant art. Within compositional book design the texture of Riso helps visualize the dynamic motion graphically.

(front side back, tendu-degage-releve lent-grand battement, 10-30-120-180 centimeter)
Book as art,
and as a four-dimensional space.
Book being generative, conceptual,
representative, and sculpture.
Every book has its own system.
The system comes from the content,
the concept, and the designer.
Designer as author,
and as content creator.



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