Ballet dancer at Opera Holland Park

This drawing depicts a dancer at Opera Holland Park, the open-air opera venue established in 1996 in the grounds of the former Holland House in west London. As a work on paper rather than a finished mokuhanga, the drawing allows direct study from the figure with the speed and immediacy that the woodblock process forecloses. Binnie's drawings frequently form the preparatory basis for later prints, and his recurring engagement with figures in performance — kabuki actors, dancers, theatre subjects — suggests the dancer here may serve as observed source material in that working sequence. The garden setting, recorded in the work's title, locates the drawing among Binnie's pieces produced beyond the studio, documenting the contemporary cultural life of his European base alongside his Japanese-trained printmaking practice.