Mud Huts & Minuets

Slowly but surely and with a little help from my trusty Nikon, I am coming to like and appreciate the art of dance.


My friend Tricia danced as a young girl and my friend Iris took ballet growing up but nothing about it ever appealed to me - like the piano lessons I was forced into, it seemed a silly way to spend time when I could be out playing softball or building a mud hut.  It was, in a word, sissified, something I'd vowed never to be.  When the doctor asked if I might be interested in photographing his daughter's monthly dance performances, I agreed and hoped my reluctance didn't show.  It would be a change of pace from the dark, smoky bars and with any luck there would be stage lighting and good backgrounds.  I didn't expect to enjoy it much but the man does sign my paychecks and having become accustomed to certain aspects of Southern life, I couldn't think of a graceful way to say no.  On the way to the theatre, an unwelcome memory suddenly surfaced -  my twelve year old self in blue velveteen pants, an imitation powdered wig and a blue cap with a white feather, dancing a Chopin minuet with an equally ridiculously costumed and humiliated female partner at our end of the year piano and dance recital.  It was the only time in my life that I'd ever regretted choosing basketball over ballroom dancing.  Never again, we'd solemnly promised each other when the dreadful dance was finally finished and we fled the stage to scrub off the horrendous makeup and change back into regular clothes.  We'd had few friends in the audience that night but word gets around and neither of us wanted to show our face for days.  What, we lamented, could be any more sissified than a minuet?  The horror of it haunted us.

There were, mercifully, no minuets at the performance.  I set my fastest lens on my camera and found a quiet corner where I thought I might capture the best lighting and set to work.  The dancers were young and thin to the point of being malnourished, but they moved with stunning grace, flexibility and unity.  The costumes were colorful but simple, the music often familiar, the smiles genuine.  The more I watched, the more taken I was, I think I knew somewhere but had forgotten that dance requires iron discipline and sacrifices I would never even dream of making.  I stayed for the entire dress rehearsal and was pleased to return for the next performances, each time a little more captivated.


Photographing dancers in fair or mood lighting is a new challenge - learning to wait for the right shot at the right moment, to capture the suggestion of movement while there's stillness - I quickly saw that it was a matter of luck and prayer and overshooting.


Even an old dog can learn a new trick or two and in the meantime I've decided to delete the word sissified from vocabulary.