I have no business speaking on dance. I've got two left feet, maybe even four if you ask pop and lockers who can do handstands. Still, after enough nights behind a camera, you start to notice how movement works against the frame or with it, and how much of what I rely on comes down to instincts. I return to them so often that they risk repetition, but hopefully guide me during a set toward something evocative that can hold interest after the sound fades.
It doesn't always come together though, as light can fall short, moments pass too quickly, or you leave with a sense of what might've slipped by.
Shows that affect me follow me home; they end up on repeat in my mind and into how I edit, images and audio folding into one another as I work. Other times the music is new to me, and shape how I experienced and edit the visual performance. I've always been drawn to that contrapposto kind of stance, where the weight shifts and the body finds a natural s-curve without trying tooo hard.
It shows up everywhere in fashion, but on stage it's rarer, or at least harder to pull off without feeling unnatural.
Watching Pearl from Sex Week under the full light at Thalia Hall, a sense of redemptive balance felt earned, coming off a previous show where the lighting wasn't ideal. Here, everything had opportunities to shift and every movement felt deliberate and easier to photograph. Angles froze just long enough, fingers splayed with precision, each part of her in motion working against another but in constant control. Balletic? Photographing her was like chasing something just ahead of my shutter, every frame pulling the next one into view. The culling process then turned into its own problem with too many frames feeling like keepers because each held a version of the same moment.
Photos can't fully hold a performance like that. It belongs to motion; to something that doesn't hold still. Video. But I tried, letting single frames suggest some sequence. Light finally showed up for the artists, giving me just enough of it to meet Pearl while she danced, frame after frame, and capture what I couldn't before.