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    Celebrating Girlhood And Empowerment Through The Love Of Dance

    Artist Petra Collins has teamed up with BB Dakota to make three beautiful short films that document young female dancers at an important stage in their lives.

    Petra Collins has become something of an art world darling, using photography to capture dreamy and sensual scenes from the lives of female adolescence.

    But that's only where she starts. She's also the founder of The Ardorous, an online art collective for emerging female artists, and her art was recently shown in a solo exhibition at Capricious 88 in New York City. Following that, she curated a hit art show of exclusively female artists coolly titled Pussy Pat.

    She's is no stranger to ruffling feathers either. In 2013, controversy surrounded her American Apparel shirt design, which featured an illustration of a menstruating vagina and suggestive hand. Her response to Time magazine showed her sentiment: "I'm really interested in what is hidden from our culture. We are always repressing or hiding what is natural to a post-pubescent body. We're taught to hate our menstrual cycle and even to hide masturbation." Shortly after, her Instagram account with over 110K followers was deleted for sharing a photo of her own pubic hair emerging from her swimsuit.

    Now Petra Collins has teamed up with clothing designers BB Dakota to create Making Space, a series of three short films that celebrates femininity and youth by documenting young dancers across America.

    Petra tells BuzzFeed:

    "This project is about the way dance can affect girls — how it can empower them and give them the opportunity to command their own space."

    "Teenage-hood is such a pivotal point in anyone's life, especially for girls today — they grow up with so much negativity. It's interesting to see how they deal with that."

    "I always thought I was going to be a dancer — dance was the first form of art that I fell in love with. I went to ballet class from a very young age and would spend endless hours with my sister Anna choreographing dances."

    "When I used to dance, I felt in control of my body and self. I suffered from reading and writing problems in school and was always put down and teased a lot because of that — I was in special ed for quite a while, but dance was something I excelled at."

    "Unfortunately, when I was 16 I suffered a bad injury — I had to have surgery and was told I shouldn't dance again. So I picked up a camera and here I am years later making a film about dancers."

    "What my sister and I found most interesting was how empowered this new generation of girls is!"

    "We went into making these films thinking they would have the same problems we had: body issues, self-doubt, etc. But the girls didn't have that; they were all so strong and self-loving."

    "It's so exciting because I think things are really changing for young girls and these girls were a reflection of that."

    Check out the BuzzFeed premiere of Part 2 in Petra Collins' Making Space series and a behind-the-scenes look in This Way: