Pirouettes and Pups

Two photographers travel the country to capture professional ballerinas dancing with dogs

“The idea is really simple,” says Kelly Pratt, a commercial photographer from St. Louis, Missouri. “We want to photograph one hundred dancers with one hundred dogs.” In January 2017, Pratt and her husband, Ian Kreidich, created Dancers & Dogs, a project that began with dancers from the St. Louis Ballet and all the willing, well-behaved pups they could find. “We wanted to show the lighter side of dance,” Pratt says. “While dancers are very serious about what they do, they’re really fun people. And a lot of them have their own dogs.” Even Pratt and Kreidich’s border collie/lab mix, Dillon, got the chance to model. Since their first shoot a year and a half ago, the team has traveled to New York, Chicago, San Diego, Cuba, and most recently Orlando, photographing forty-one duos to date. “The ultimate goal is to make a book,” Pratt says. “But really we just want to make people smile.” Mission accomplished. Take a happiness break and click through ten of their photos.