Autumn Winter 2021 Show, ERDEM

For Autumn Winter 2021, Erdem is at the ballet. We are in the wings, that liminal space between onstage and offstage, observing dancers crisscrossing over the mental and physical threshold to perform, moving from private to public and back again in a beat, a breath and the stretching or tensing of a limb. The seed was sown for Erdem following his collaboration with The Royal Ballet in 2018. He has worked here with Edward Watson, a principle dancer of The Royal Ballet, as movement director to capture this curious limbo state in the wings. The spirit of the collection comes from Margot Fonteyn in the period of her career when she began dancing with Rudolf Nureyev. In 1961 when they first met, Fonteyn was 42 and Nureyev was 23. She was ready to retire, but such was the alchemy of their performance that she danced on for nearly two decades. Their synergy transcended taboo and shattered staid views about the age of a female dancer and the arc of her career. Photographs from this era show Fonteyn