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Tag Archives: dance

Clara’s Dream – NH dance photography

December 22, 2009 – 10:19 am

For those of you who thought tap dance was old-fashioned, stodgy, or simply people clicking away on a stage…WRONG!

A couple of night’s ago I had the opportunity to photograph a performance of Clara’s Dream, a jazz and tap rendition of The Nutcracker produced by Maine dancer and artistic director Drika Overton. The costumes were stunning, the stage lighting and set design phenomenal, the band tremendous…but all paled in comparison to the dancers. They could have put this show on on your local street corner and it still would have been mind-blowing.
From a photographer’s perspective, it was like being a kid in a candy store – almost impossible to choose what to shoot – there were visual delights stage left, stage right, and center stage. If you took the time to look away fro the spotlit dance, all sorts of subtle dances were happening in the background. I’ve never seen anything like it.

My suggestion – send Drika an email (http://www.jazzandtap.com/ ) and beg her to bring the show back in 2010. The show was first performed in 2000, and its been on vacation since 2006.  Don’t let it go back into mothballs again – the 6 musicians and 20 dancersw are a must see-must hear. After insuring its return, Mark it on your calendar, and make sure not to miss this show – it could – and should – be the start of a new holiday tradition!

And support it. Without money, the arts are just a footnote in a textbook. Don’t let that happen to this one-of-a-kind show. It’s too great to slip away.

Here’s a slideshow of some of the highlights of Clara’s Dream.

By Jay | Posted in commercial photography, dance, inspiration, music, Personal Project, photojournalism | Also tagged , , | Comments (3)

Recovery!

January 21, 2009 – 10:57 pm

Fedex brought me the nicest present today – my old harddrive and a spare I had sent in. On the spare was the recovery of my old. corrupted drive. Seems like everything but my applications was recovered – it will be a bit of time before I really know, but the best part was the folder of images from the jazz and tap odyssey were there! I honestly thought they were gone forever.

OK, lession I always preach has been learned – BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP – no, in a minute again and again.

To celebrate I’m posting a few images from the performance – there are still some shows coming up, I’ll post a schedule in the next few days.

By Jay | Posted in photojournalism | Also tagged , , | Comments (0)

Drika portrait

January 4, 2009 – 9:55 pm

After dealing with a computer owner’s worst nightmare – a major league harddrive crash and corruption – I’m back to posting and writing.

Finding photographs from the various backups I have in place has been a bit like playing hide and seek – guess who was it!

I recovered a lot – and hopefully the rest will be recovered by a data recovery outfit in Cambridge, MA – I’ll let you know in another week or so.

Its funny, you never know what you have till its gone – silly little things like presets for printing and photoshop actions to speed up the workflow – back to reinventing the wheel.

Almost a year ago Drika Overton – one of the world’s great dancers – and I spent a sub zero afternoon along the coast of Maine shooting for a show she was putting together. I really didn’t get the concept then, but when I saw the show I was in total awe. Can you imagine a jazz group, a moderator reciting poetry and prose and tap dancers doing what I can only describe as modern jazz tap…if there is such a thing – all speaking to Rachel carson, the original environmentalist!

Still trying to recover the show photos – here’s the photo we came up for the poster.

By Jay | Posted in photojournalism, portraits | Also tagged , , | Comments (0)