New York based Omar Z. Robles captures ballet dancers poised gracefully against the city grit of NYC, performing pirouettes and pliés amid taxi traffic jams, sidewalk puddles, and other bustling urban scenes.

Omar first started out as a mime and then went back to school to rediscover himself. He found photography and got into shooting street photography. Over time, it turned into working with dancers on the streets to create a type of image that has become iconic. While Omar feels like he still does some sort of documentary process with his work, he feels like he is a creative director of the most part.

In an interview with Huffington Post, he explains, “Like mime theater, photography [is] an amazing nonverbal communication medium…Yet it allowed [me] to capture fleeting emotions and tell a story for a much longer time than mime theater could.” In his stirring visual tales, ballerinas and ballerinos make the perfect protagonists. As he describes, “Ballet dancers make us feel as if their movements were truly effortless. This while pushing their bodies to the very extreme of what is humanly possible. It is that grace and elegance which mesmerizes us.”

Scroll down to see the latest images from Omar’s NYC series. Be sure to upvote and comment on your favorites!

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