RELATIONSHIPS - DANCE

Originally published March 4, 2009

The latest assignment I’ve had to do as part as my MA deals with relationships. Taking relationships in the wider sense of the word, it’s seems I’ve taken the approach of why keep things simple and straight forward when you can make them impossibly complicated? I’ve just completed my first shoot and am seriously considering a reshoot. I opted to try document the relationship between a contemporary dance teacher and her students, most aged around 15, during a dance class. I was also looking for what sort of relationship there is among the students themselves.

The thing with contemporary dance is that there’s little physical interaction during the lesson, it’s all done by voice and through the teacher doing the moves and students following her actions, most of the eye contact is done via the large mirrors at the front of the room. The relationship dynamics move via the mirror. It’s not close and intimate in the way a music teacher and a pupil would be; it’s not like in classical ballet where the teacher will go round the students one by one, adjusting the position of a hand, a foot and so on. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen in contemporary dance, but when it does, it’s usually over in half a second and tends to be on the far end from where you’ve placed yourself. So when you’re limited to using one lens (a 50mm in my case), you’ve got to almost fly across the room as though you’re a dancer yourself (and believe me I’m not!) in order to get the right angle, whilst taking care that another dance doesn’t back kick you as she goes through her paces.

Sandra Mifsud is one of the top contemporary dancers and choreographers on the island. I’ve followed her work for many years and she’s come up with some terrific and memorable pieces. The chance to photograph one of her classes at the Brigitte Gauci Borda School of Ballet was too good to pass up. But do the shots work? I’m not too sure… yes, there are some decent images but whether they fulfill the brief of capturing relationships is something I’m not sure of. One thing I’m certain of is that most of the pictures don’t really deal with the relationship at all but work as dance pictures in their own right.

Perhaps I should give it another go and cover a classical ballet lesson instead?

MAPJD Relationships 1 - Dance class EDIT - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi