W+K Designers Celebrate a Leaper’s 85th Birthday with Leaping Dancers

In celebration of Leap Day 2020, a group of fellow ad creatives came together to celebrate a “leaper”—a person born on February 29—through art and photography. In honor of Deloris Davis’s 21st leap year birthday, photographer Kyle Pero and design art director David Trujillo worked with professional ballet dancers from the Oregon Ballet Theatre to create an image composed of 21 dancers, representing the 21 leap years of Deloris’s life. The artwork serves as a visual metaphor of time and existence.

A leap year occurs every four years and consists of 366 days. As such, leapers experience a strange existence, full of legal discrepancies and only getting to (technically) celebrate their birthday every four years. This project seeks to recognize a leaper on an otherwise lost day.

“Deloris’s grandmother changed Deloris’s birthday to Feb. 28, 1935, because Deloris would cry all the time when her friends would have birthdays every year but she didn’t. As a little girl, Deloris didn’t understand how unique and amazing it was to be born on a leap year.” —Deloris’ daughter

Through the Wieden+Kennedy network (where they’ve both worked), Kyle and David found a coworker’s grandmother with a profound story. A descendant of full-blooded Cherokee Indian's, Deloris was adopted by her grandparents after losing her family at an early age. The oldest of 13 children, she dropped out of school to help her grandparents.

Later in life, Deloris raised her own children as a single parent after her husband was murdered. In addition to raising successful children, Deloris earned a college degree, worked as a special education teacher, and adopted three foster children who would have otherwise been separated. Deloris has outlived her siblings and will be 85 years old on February 29, 2020.