Dance in a Trance
Capture of gestures, motions, a fleeting moment… or may be a coy glance of the pretty damsel is what the audience has perceived, but then what perhaps has not been readily treasured. Dance captured in the ripples of motion, at times freezing moments, then again allowing the fluidity of the progresses of This is what it is all about in ‘Dance in a Trance’.
Be it a dance, a ballet an opera……….. what a spectator witnesses is a combined effort of the toils of the specialists; the artists, costumes, makeup, sound, lighting, stage and direction.
As Earnest Hass quotes, “Photography is transformation. Not a reproduction” and if what we do is just robotically begin to capture images of a dance, it would be a stereotyped reportage. If on the other hand we do capture imaginatively and with an insight as to what the phases in a dance are then this would be an artistically exciting photograph.
The techniques that I employ for the capture of visual movements and fluidity to record impressions of dance is slow shutter speeds. These captures then echo what the critics of dance constantly harp on - dance is fluidity. Dance is vigor. Dance is dynamism. My desire was to capture the movements of dance in rhythm, in harmony and vivaciously as flashes suspended in time, with the camera’s shutter speed imaginatively and precisely worked to show the form of the dance as it was or in even further dramatic stances.
Dance is ceaselessly a blend of rhythm; speed to a beat and in melodramatic, riotous color and certainly there is no dance sans movement. What I see in a dance is a combine…. an arrangement of agility and fluidity of a voyage and dance is certainly not a frozen instant in time with a high shutter speed but as a continuous rhythmic series of passage of a tempo.
Bursts captured in this style to me gratify the senses in a matchless fashion with the beauty of the rhythmic trances of splendor in slow motion, yet which stimulate the connoisseurs’ eye and mind for further evolvement. This to me is superior imaginative creations brought about with my wide knowledge of the dance forms, the photo artistry and perhaps the visualization of the choreographer.
My practice has solely been based on the ‘slow’ capture of motions, movement and the gestures rarely falling back on unjustified digital manipulation. Dance, is based on real time capture as I consider even the skilled digital manipulator would not have the wherewithal to fall back solely on software such as Photoshop for the creations that I present. The technique that works for me is to expose images at a series of diverse time factors and to merge my captures judiciously, to unite the ‘still’ and the ‘motion’.
This is my fashion to present divinely the splendor of the ‘trace’ in dance…..