AGELESS DANCERS Book Launch and Signing Announced At Jason McCoy Gallery In April

Ageless Dancers, a volume of photographs by painter and sculptor Betti Franceschi, is scheduled for release by Overhead Press on Thursday, April 18, 2024. Through the expressive line of her subjects, Franceschi's Ageless Dancers serves as a testament to the artistry that survives diminished athleticism.

The publication will be celebrated at a book signing and show of photographs on April 18, 5:00-7:00PM, at Jason McCoy Gallery, 41 East 56th Street in New York City. Franceschi and many of the dancers appearing in the book will be in attendance and on hand for questions and answers.

Ageless Dancers depicts 40 iconic dancers from the disciplines of ballet, modern, contemporary, tap, and musical theater. Carmen De Lavallade, Janet Eilber, Suki Schorer, Martine van Hamel, and Edward Villella, as well as the late Jacques d'Amboise, Jennifer Muller, Sarah Stackhouse, and Gus Solomons jr., are among the artists featured. With an introduction by painter and curator George Negroponte, Ageless Dancers is comprised of 70 photographs, capturing the grace, strength, and intelligence of each former dancer. The volume, designed by Simon Rendall and Brilliant Graphics, represents Franceschi's decades-long fascination with dancers. As a painter, sculptor, and dancer manquée, Franceschi has long studied bodies that speak. Her previous book, The Still Point (1983), presented a series of graphite drawings of leading New York dancers, focusing on the center of the body. The Still Point received six nominations to The 1987 National Trust Show in London and Frankfurt.

Ageless Dancers is currently available for pre-order through Brilliant Editions (brilliant-editions.com). Books will be available for sale at the Jason McCoy Gallery on and after April 18 and through the Brilliant website.

About Betti Franceschi

Betti Franceschi is an artist who has done a double major in school and in life: fine art and ballet. Born in 1934 and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, she studied ballet with Marguerite De Anguera at Indiana University, Bloomington, fine art with Roger Anliker at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon), and art history with Rosalind Krauss at Hunter College. Her Still Point drawings—vertical-hatched, tightly realistic nude close-ups of dancers' centers—were published in London as a book (The Still Point, 1987) designed by Simon Rendall, which won six nominations to the National Trust Show in London and Frankfurt, and were exhibited at Sadlers Wells in London, the National Museum of Dance in Saratoga Springs, New York, and the Philharmonic Center in Naples, Florida, among other venues. Her explosive, almost abstract, zen-calligraphic Signature Drawings (1987-on) of dancers in motion, have been exhibited in several venues, including the New York State Theater, home of the New York City Ballet, and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Her early work was mostly portraits, then she turned to focus on movement, with figure drawings and paintings, and later, sculptures of dancers. In 2015 her interest in gesture brought her to photography for her Ageless Dancers project, a series of elegant, joyous portraits of dancers in the latter years of life. Her work has been reviewed in the London Evening Standard, The New York Times, the Saratogian, the New York City Ballet Playbill, and Dance Magazine. Franceschi lives in New York City.

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