A Dance Underground
A Gesture of Life in Transit
This tattoo was made for @nefiirafto at Visions of Ecstasy Studio in Berlin.
It began with a simple request.
She came to me wanting an image of two women — close, affectionate, something suspended somewhere between a hug and a dance. Nothing dramatic. Nothing symbolic in a loud or monumental way. Just two people sharing a moment of connection. Something human, quiet, and real.
Almost immediately, it brought back a photograph I had seen years ago. I don’t remember the article. I don’t even remember why I picked up the magazine. It was lying on a small table in a dentist’s waiting room, the kind of place where time feels slightly paused. I didn’t need to read anything. The image alone was enough to stay with me.
Two women dressed in men’s clothing, suddenly dancing together inside a Moscow subway car. Around them, the familiar scene of early-morning commuters: tired faces, closed expressions, bodies trained to move efficiently and take up as little space as possible. People half-awake, half-elsewhere. And right there, in the middle of that grey routine, these two women were completely absorbed in each other.
What struck me wasn’t the surprise of the gesture, but its tone. There was no performance in it. No rebellion. No statement aimed outward. Just a quiet complicity between the two. A tenderness. A shared rhythm. They allowed themselves a moment of joy in a place not designed to hold it.
Their expressions said everything. Calm. Focused. Present. They weren’t asking for permission. They weren’t pushing against anything. They were simply there, together, for as long as the moment lasted.
It was a small interruption in the machinery of the subway.
A brief pause inside a system built to keep moving.
The metro is a space meant for passing through, not for connecting. People avoid eye contact. Everyone follows invisible rules: stand here, don’t touch, keep moving, think about where you’re going next. It’s a place of transition, not arrival. And yet, for a few seconds, those two women created something alive inside it.
What made the moment powerful was how subtle it was. Almost easy to miss. A gesture so soft it felt private, even though it happened in public. Something that didn’t demand attention, but rewarded those who noticed.
That feeling became the foundation of the tattoo.
Not a perfect pose. Not a staged image meant to impress. But that fragile spark that appears unexpectedly and stays with you long after everything else dissolves. The kind of moment you don’t realize is important until you find yourself remembering it years later, without knowing exactly why.
Some tattoos grow out of mythology or history. They carry weight through centuries, through stories repeated again and again.
This one came from something much smaller.
A fleeting dance between strangers.
A moment that existed briefly and then disappeared.
And maybe that’s exactly why it mattered.
It’s a reminder that intimacy doesn’t need special conditions. It doesn’t need a stage or an explanation. It can surface anywhere — even in the most ordinary, exhausted places — if you’re attentive enough to see it.
That’s what this tattoo holds.
Not an event.
Not a message.
Just a quiet proof that connection can interrupt routine, even if only for a moment — and that sometimes, those interruptions are the things that stay with us the longest.
nOT
