Ballet Against Bullets

Ballet Against Bullets

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Ballet Against Bullets is a long-term documentary project that tells the story of Na Ponta dos Pés, a grassroots ballet initiative located in Morro do Adeus, part of the Complexo do Alemão in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Founded by Tuany Nascimento, a local young woman and former artistic gymnast, the program provides more than 200 girls and young women with a path to dignity, discipline, and hope through classical dance. Complexo do Alemão is one of Brazil’s most violent favela complexes, where heavily armed drug factions battle for territorial control. Morro do Adeus has changed hands multiple times in recent years, displacing families with each shift in power. Within this volatile environment, Na Ponta dos Pés stands as a refuge: a space where Black girls—marked by violence, racism, poverty, and gender inequality—can find strength and reclaim their identities through movement and community. The photographic sequence reflects these contrasts: fragility and resilience, violence and grace. The images move between intimate portraits and contextual scenes: a young dancer practicing amid makeshift surroundings; neighbors casually watching after a gunfight; a ballet class held under a basketball court's tin roof; the project’s founder dancing with strength and poetry atop the favela; and a panoramic view of Alemão, where beauty and pain, hope and resistance coexist. This is ultimately a story of transformation. A testament to how art can reclaim spaces overtaken by fear and turn them into places of belonging and meaning. Ballet Against Bullets is a visual chronicle of how dance becomes a lifeline—not only to survive, but to resist and heal collectively, fighting every day for peace and equal opportunity.