AS a singer and songwriter, Jerry Burns is used to being centre stage.
Since her beautiful, self-titled album of 1992 – which is being re-released in January – she has collaborated with everyone from renowned film composer Craig Armstrong to Bryan Ferry and Massive Attack.
For the past eight years, however, she has worked as a theatre dresser in her home city of Glasgow, and the exquisite photographs she has taken while backstage at a variety of productions are about to see the light of day in an unusual and unique exhibition.
Girl in the Wings, which opens at the Theatre Royal on Saturday, December 9, is the result of a collaboration between Jerry and Scottish Ballet which stretches back to a time when the singer was signed to Sony and working abroad, considering a move back to Glasgow.
When she was offered a job as a dresser, she admits she had no idea what the job entailed.
“It was one freezing Christmas, in the snow, and I really didn’t know what a dresser was,” explains Jerry. “But the utter magic I found being in the wings, caught up in the beauty and adrenaline of making sure a prince, or a winged sylph, or a Mouse King got on stage, took hold of my heart and my imagination and never let go.”
She adds: “I’ve never forgotten that first Christmas, and finding the laughter and warmth and intimacy of a world I wouldn’t normally see because my life revolved around being on stage.”
Suddenly, says Jerry, she wasn’t “the main story."
“I was responsible for someone else being that, and for getting them on stage, while orchestras played and ballerinas clacked their beautiful pointe shoes, ready to leap into the glittering lights,” she adds.
“It’s a very privileged experience being trusted by a performer. There’s no time for introspection.
"It’s also a physical and emotional choreography between you and the other dressers and the performers, and that beautiful sensation of knowing you ‘made it’ after a heart-stopping, implausibly quick change in the dark.”
Photography has always been her “true love”, she says, inspired by the likes of Eve Arnold and Lee Miller, and fuelled by her fascination with romantic films.
“I grew up with Gene Kelly, and the films my mum loved and let us watch over and over, like Anchors Aweigh and On The Town and Brigadoon,” explains Jerry. “I loved the lighting of the 40s and the everyday American glamour of film noir.”
The desire to take photographs was always there, she explains, but it was not until she stood in the wings at the Theatre Royal, watching Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake unfold on the stage in front of her, that she finally had a place to begin.
“I suddenly found myself somewhere with endlessly wonderful moments I wanted to hold on to,” she says.
Jerry has made a short ballet film, The Human Touch, with designer Victoria Brown and Bethany Kingsley-Garner, principal dancer at Scottish Ballet.
“Girl in the Wings wouldn’t exist without Scottish Ballet,” says Jerry. “I’m so grateful to them for sharing space in their beautiful theatre with us during the run of Cinders!”
Starring Bethany, with a soundtrack co-written by Jerry and composer Sally Herbert, the film will be shown during the exhibition at the theatre.
“The Theatre Royal holds huge sentimental value for me,” says Jerry. “I’ve lived and worked in beautiful places from Paris and Barcelona to New York but always with a sense of impermanence.
"The Theatre Royal gave me a sense of belonging and sentimentality. So many beautiful things, including the photographs, have been created because of my years being in the wings."
She adds: "The oldest theatre in Glasgow, it's been a constant in my life for the past eight years – a warm hug, a best friend, my Neverland.”
Girl in the Wings is open to the public on Tuesdays and Saturdays from December 9 until 31 before performances of Scottish Ballet’s Cinders!
Jerry Burns, Jerry’s 1992 album, is being re-released in January by Past Night From Glasgow, complete with four bonus tracks.
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