Capturing Dance

40 million photos are taken on Instagram everyday and 8,500 likes and 1,000 comments are given every second. Instagram is my favourite social media site I have a profile on. I love the idea of having a space I can post and document my favourite photos, capturing special moments in my life. I have a large number of dance related posts on my profile and I use Instagram as a place to express my achievements and success in my professional life. Below I have screenshotted some dance posts on my Instagram (my profile is private so the links would not take you to the photos).

This is me dancing in the Snow Scene of Nutcracker with Atlantic City Ballet. It was taken by one of the company dancers.

This is a 'selfie' taken by me and my room mate backstage before the waltz of the flowers dance in Nutcracker. In a skype discussion with Paula we were talking about my professional online image, when we googled me this photo came up in the search. We discussed the importance of having positive images like this online and how it reflects my personality and positive attitude.

This is one of my professional CV shots taken by Brian O'Caroll. I posted this photo on Instagram to announce my departure from England to America to start my journey with Atlantic City Ballet.

This image was taken by a teacher from a nursery I visited at Christmas for a Nutcracker outreach event. I was dressed as the Sugar Plum Fairy and taught the nursery children a few ballet moves and talked to them about being a ballerina. I posted this photo because it was a very special moment and it also reflects my view on the importance of inspiring others and encouraging an appreciation for dance and the arts.

I also interviewed one of my best friends Kaine Ward who was Billy Elliott on the West End and also appeared in the live show rounds of Sky's 'Got To Dance.' He has a very popular Instagram page with nearly 12,000 followers. The dance posts he puts on Instagram get a lot of attention and he even has fan pages. We talked about how he uses his online presence to promote himself as a dancer. He has his professional contact email in his biography section of the page so people have a direct link to contact him and also links to his other social media sites. He uses hashtags on his photos to target certain audiences and also tags well known dancers and people so that when he meets them in person they have already seen him online. He talked about the private messages section of the site and how he receives a lot of comments through that. This has been useful for professional contacts he has talked with but he also receives a lot of strange messages too!!