"Dancers & Dogs" Features ABT Stars and Their Adorable Furry Friends

Dance collaborations are always exciting but there’s a special place in our hearts for dance projects that feature our favorite, furry, four-legged friends, otherwise known as dogs. That’s why when Kelly Pratt Kreidich came up with the concept of shooting elegant ballet dancers next to the cutest creatures on earth, she decided she had to run with it. The resulting photos were so sweet and unexpected that Kreidich decided to create a project featuring 100 Dancers and 100 Dogs.

When the project started in early 2017, Kreidich and her husband Ian, were working as marketing and performance photographers for the Saint Louis Ballet, so most of the dancers she photographed were members of the Saint Louis Ballet. But positive feedback from the project was so overwhelming that Kreidich decided to expand this fun twist on ballet to dancers and dogs beyond the city of Saint Louis.

And what better place to expand than NYC—where primas constantly bring their pooches to class. (Many of these dogs are so popular they even have their own Instagram accounts.) It makes perfect sense then, that Dancers & Dogs would team up with some of our favorite American Ballet Theatre ballerinas. Corps de ballet dancers Rachel Richardson and Betsy McBride, and principal Sarah Lane posed for photos with cuddly canines and we can’t get enough of it.

Snapshots like these are precisely why there needs to be an ‘adore’ button on Instagram!

“Ballet is often seen as stuffy or unapproachable, and we feel like this project helps people see the lighter side of dancers,” Kreidich wrote on her website devoted to the canines and their dancing counterparts.

Checkout behind-the-scenes moments of dancers with man’s best friend in this fab video and for more clickable cuteness look at these dancers and their dogs.