Ballet dancer and photographer Juan Carlos Osma captures humanity behind performance in Uncovered exhibition

At nine years old, Juan Carlos Osma was told he didn’t have the right body for ballet. His knees were curved instead of straight, and his legs, feet and skin tone didn’t fit the classical art form’s ideal prototype. “I was always dancing, since I can remember, and to be rejected for something I could not change was difficult,” Osma tells STM. Retrospectively, it took the aspiring dancer a whole lot more than knee realignment surgery at the ripe age of 12 for him to find his feet in the industry, earn a deserving place, and learn to love the body he was born with. Now, the acclaimed WA Ballet principal artist is confronting body image pressures, and the reality behind the highly technical, formalised performance dance, in a powerful photographic exhibition opening at Claremont’s The Agency Gallery next week. Titled Uncovered, the exhibition features powerful black-and-white portraits of dancers, including some of his WA Ballet peers, to depict the human body as images of both vulnerability and resilience, strength and fragility, rather than objects of perfection. It’s ballet stripped bare. “The images are not perfect ballet moments,” Osma says, ahead of the sold-out opening night, arguing that the most powerful moments are those when we glimpse the raw humanity behind the elegant performance. The images for Uncovered are top secret, to be unveiled only as the room fills, but form the latest chapter in a body of work the dancer-turned-photographer has been pouring himself into in recent years, including the images on these pages. The Cuban-born artist has been storytelling his whole life through movement — from the traditional dance styles of salsa, mambo, cha-cha and rumba that he performed in Havana from age five, to onstage spectacles with the West Australian Ballet today. His recent transition into photography became another medium to continue this passion. The visual art form entered his life unexpectedly when he discovered a trove of old family photographs. “I was looking at pictures of myself dancing with my mum from when I was five, and I didn’t understand the concept,” he reflects. “I asked her, ‘how come I look like this here, but I don’t remember this moment?’ And she explained how photography captures the moment. That, for me, was mind-blowing.” Years later, during the pandemic, Osma formally studied a diploma of photography, while continuing his demanding schedule as a full-time ballet dancer. “I automatically combined my two passions,” he says. At first he photographed fellow dancers during rehearsals, capturing the hours of hard work and technical precision required to perform at an elite level. But he gradually realised the emotional power of the images extended beyond the dance floor itself. “It was just a matter of time for me to realise that the story within the images was the powerful element,” he says. Photography also offered something the professional dancer craved — complete creative freedom. While working with a ballet company sees him contributing to the creation of its breathtaking productions, his own creativity needed an outlet. “I like to have a channel where I can express my personal vision,” he says. Osma’s exploration of the discipline, trust, vulnerability and the courage to be seen that performance requires, has become increasingly intimate as he also grappled with the body image pressures and rejections he has faced within the dance world almost his entire life. Yet, as his photographs depict, a ballet dancer’s career can be marked with both achievement and resilience. After training from childhood in Cuba, he graduated from the national ballet school, Fernando Alonso Academy, in 2010, as both both a professional dancer and qualified teacher. He then toured with the renowned dance company Ballet Revolucion, performing across France, Italy, Australia, Germany, Switzerland and the UK, including an exclusive performance for the late Queen Elizabeth II. Osma later danced as a principal artist with Joburg Ballet in South Africa, and with Liaoning Ballet in China, as well as choreographing his own piece, Find Me, on the Primorsky Stage of Russia’s Mariinsky Theatre. After his globe-trotting career, he joined WA Ballet in 2019, where he has performed numerous roles, including in Alice in Wonderland, Giselle, The Nutcracker, La Bayadere, Swan Lake, Don Quixote, and The Sleeping Beauty, alongside works by acclaimed choreographers including Nils Christe, David Dawson and George Balanchine. With each stage and each performance, Osma says he came to realise that the only way forward is radical self-acceptance. “It took exactly that, accepting my body as it is, and being purposely vulnerable,” he says. Rather than wearing loose pants to hide his legs during training, he started doing the opposite. “I began wearing really short shorts and showed my legs every moment, so whoever walks into a room knows exactly what they’re getting when they’re working with me. This is me,” he says, with confidence. This notion sits at the heart of Uncovered. Many of the dancers appear almost nude, their bodies curled, collapsing, resisting or confronting the camera. Osma says building enough trust to create those moments took time, as he worked with subjects for whom immaculate form is so vital. “There is that trust in dance that is already very intimate,” he says. “But it still took time to talk about the image, talk about the work, talk about the purpose behind the work.” Eventually the dancers stopped worrying about how they looked and became emotionally present within the frame. “This is when it got beautiful,” he says. One photograph shows a dancer folded inward beneath a tutu, listening to herself. Another captures a dancer resisting the floor in a powerful handstand. “There’s so many emotions there,” Osma says. The lack of colour in Osma’s images is a deliberate artistic decision. “Colours are distractions,” he says. “For me black and white is very real. It’s the human side of it.” Without colour, Osma believes audiences are forced to confront emotion, shape and story alone. “He’s a white dancer, he’s a black dancer — no,” he says. “He’s just a dancer and it’s a story.” It’s an exhibition he hopes will resonate universally because, at the end of the day, everyone has a body — and everyone, in some way, feels the pressure of society’s ever-shifting standards. “I hope the work serves as a mirror. I want people to understand that they’re not alone,” he says. Inside the gallery walls, ballet is no longer about perfection. It’s about being seen. Uncovered is at The Agency Gallery in Claremont, June 4-13.