Photo campaigns tell us a lot about the self-image of ballet companies: a new project at New York City Ballet is more artful

When ballet companies invite photographers in, there's often a revealing subtext to the resulting shots. Contained within a gallery of beautiful bodies, there is usually a message about the aspirations the company have for themselves and the anxieties they have about public perception.

Take the Royal Opera House's recent World Stage campaign, in which the Royal Ballet's featured dancers were shown leaping, or balancing against monumental backdrops, such as the Grand Canyon and the Olympic stadium.

The sheer scale of these images elevated dancers such as Sarah Lamb, Sergei Polunin and Edward Watson into the realm of the heroic and the sublime; they became astounding athletes who could be pitted against any natural or manmade force. But beyond highlighting the beauty and power of their bodies, this series conveyed two other important messages: that ballet has nothing to do with the pretty pink and the twee; and that ballet as an art form is a global force.

English National Ballet's recent campaign also set its face against pretty and pink, in its recent update of the brand. Dancers were kitted out in Vivienne Westwood punky gothic evening wear, and posed in hotly lit interiors that were a postmodern version of fin-de-siecle decadence. The subtext was less about heroics than about sophistication, danger and sex.

Another commonly seen variation on the anti-pink theme is to take the photographer backstage, to show the intimate, blood-sweat-and-tears reality of the profession as the dancers rehearse, take class or (this one is always popular) ease pointe shoes off their battered, bunioned feet.

But set against these conventions is a new collaboration between New York City Ballet and the French street artist JR which rests on a concept which seems to be pleasingly less about PR and more about art.

JR (who styles himself a "photograffeur") is known for the giant photographic images that he flyposts on to public sites and buildings, and for the way his images subtly transmute faces and bodies into non-human elements such as paper, wood or vegetation.

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As this video trailer suggests, his photographs of NYCB dancers are true to his past form, and very different from the usual notions of ballet glamour. Inspired by the concept of the corps de ballet, JR has orchestrated large groups of dancers into semi-abstract images that focus on texture, pattern and shape. The results are both beautiful and visually surprising. But even more important than that, JR has found a method of aligning himself to the ways in which a great choreographer uses the corps, treating those two or three dozen bodies as raw material for a spectrum of musical or visual or poetic effects.

What I like so much about JR's installation is that in going beyond individual dancer portraits, it conveys something rare and true about the collective alchemy that ballet can create on stage.