dance - framing and composition
I attended two nights from the Amman Contemporary Dance Festival this past week. I took some photographs on the last night of the festival, sitting in one seat, slight off center to the left of the stage. The limitation I had was that I was taking photos from one point. I did not feel eager to have a look at the photos, but two hours of editing later, I was happy with the results. I made sure to take photos at the extreme points of a specific movement. If they’re reaching for the sky, it was at the highest point of the hands I pressed the shutter. I put effort in making sure I saw all their faces. Dance, like painting, like photography, is a relational art. an ever moving canvas that interacts with bodies and souls. Each element on the stage is in one place in relation to the other, or in relation to the edges of the stage. Whether that’s if all dancers are grouped together or three equally distanced apart, or whether there is one dancer still at the edge of the still while there are two others towards backstage moving, every element you see is providing value in contrast to the other elements around it.
I was intentional about how I framed the performance in each of my photos. It was a beautiful process to edit them and create something out of them.
Value can always be provided when you have a camera. People love to have their work be eternalized through photos. I understand that through the camera I have something that I can always give people. And with that I will always be giving, hoping that the world I create for myself and those around me is a world of giving.
Last week I performed my first choreographed with Midan Dance at Al balad Theater. I was humbled by the process of creating a 2-minute performance. It required iteration, intuition, and curiosity. What I love about dance is the immediate feedback you get because you feel movement and ideas physically in your body. What came out of this process was a result of using my story, my feelings, and my most recent moving experiences and curiosities and putting them for show to a crowd. I wanted to play with the contrast between anger and meditation, and fast and slow. I found in this exploration an expanded understanding of defiance, strength, and falling. I stretched my hips a lot during my practice (a region in our body that I feel has endless growth), and I’ve expanded my movement as a result of this performance. We ended the night with a group improvisation piece and dabke by Baqaa Camp based Alsaahil Dabkeh . Thank you @arthurtntr for capturing emotion and shape. Thank you Ryuji for the opportunity and support. You can find the performance filmed at the end of this post. I performed it, and now it is gone forever.
