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If I was truly ill such as a fever or flu would I still have to write the 1-2 pg essay?

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My first exposure to the term Ethnography was through article II. On Dance Ethnography by Deidre Sklar. It wasn't until Monday's tap class where I really started to make the connections. In class, we were learning a piece called the Shim Sham. I had no prior cultural knowledge of tap. This was apparent through my dancing when I realized my movements aren't as emphasized or loud as they are supposed to be. During the short period of time I took tap I was told to be lean and light and airy with my brushes, yet this is quite the opposite of the native form. Native form is done by bending your knees and brushing with purpose and power. In the article, it mentions that dance has a vulnerability to it. My emotions were directly affecting my performance due to ethnography.

The second time my ethnographic knowledge was present was during modern class Thursday. We did this exercise where we were told to close our eyes and to run our hands down our front and backside to essentially feel our body for what it is and to appreciate it for all we put it through. This experience was really eye-opening since being a dancer it's hard not to be crucial or scrutinize my body. Dancing allows us to use it as a tool, but if we aren't appreciative of it can very quickly turn into a weapon. I noticed that when I was doing stretches of contractions, my body was stiff and precious. In fact, a fellow dancer said “she knew I was trained in ballet due to my lines”. My cultural background was evident simply because of the way my body was communicating during the dance. Lab was just a confirmation of my European style background.

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For his project titled Motion, Brooklyn, New York-based photographer Bill Wadman shot portraits of dancers with a slow shutter speed in order to capture their movements through motion blur. The resulting photographs look like a strange fusion of photography and painting.

Here's what Wadman tells us about how the project came about:

'Motion' started as an experiment, a departure from my traditional and conceptual portrait work. I had attended a lecture by old-school sports photographer Marvin Newman where he showed a slow shutter speed image he had taken of a boxer with his saturated glove smearing across the frame as he punched his opponent. I was inspired by the imagery and idea of capturing motion in a dynamic way, so started experimenting with long exposure photography.

My initial plan was to use a broad cross-section of subjects, specifically people who move as part of their job. Athletes, construction workers, cooks, etc. were all on my initial list of potential shoots. However, my first experiment was with a professional dancer and the results were incredible, so I decided all the subjects should people whose use of motion is their living. During the following months I had sessions with nine different dancers.

The entire series was shot using a Canon 5D Mark II and a 35mm f/1.4 lens, and the resulting photographs were cropped to a 4×5 ratio during post.

Each of the images is a simple exposure taken in a very dark room, with a single soft light source shining down on the dancers from above. Wadman used a 3-second shutter speed with his lens stopped down to f/11 (to prevent the depth-of-field from being too shallow, since he was aiming for motion blur rather than out-of-focus blur).

This project is like a non-flash version of photographer Ben Von Wong's dancer photo behind-the-scenes that he shared here last month.

You can buy some of these photographs in the form of a print or a photo book through Wadman's online store.

P.S. We interviewed Wadman back in 2009 regarding his 365 Portraits project.
Image credits: Photographs by Bill Wadman and used with permission

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Blurred Long-Exposure Portraits Showing Dancers in Motion

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For his project titled Motion, Brooklyn, New York-based photographer Bill Wadman shot portraits of dancers with a slow shutter speed in order to capture their movements through motion blur. The resulting photographs look like a strange fusion of photography and painting.

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I like to think of being a dancer as being a mirror, I take in what is given to me such as my feelings, environment and senses and I reflect that or in other words express that message using my body as a conduit for communication. In order to express something I must embody it completely, essentially I willingly hand over my body to that feeling whether it is a feeling itself or how I preserve something to feel. The end goal for any dancer is to reflect that element, feeling, sense etc... to the audience and for them to be engulfed in whatever feeling I am trying to relay. Dance is something that is forever changing and growing, it is not linear. To dance it is to take the beholder on a journey, whatever that may be. I could use expression and feeling to amplify untold voices by first trying to get as much perspective on that voice, so I may embody it correctly and do it justice. I would then break it down piece by piece and change the tempo and moves according to the expression I am trying to convey. Not only that, but I could push boundaries such as using more hips if the voice applies to it and through that I can reflect the story so what they see is the progression of the story, so it may educate them or bring awareness to the said subject. There is this untold relationship between the dancer and the audience, which I can only describe as a teacher and their student.

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Ironically, what I am learning in my history and politics of American education class is aligning well with this week's focus. In my history and politics class, we are learning about how you carry yourself and how that can then relate to test scores. In the article, African American students' test scores were lower than white students. The difference between the two was solely psychological. The little saying “confidence is key '' actually has merit, think about the support system you have at school and how if your teachers believe in your success the likelihood of you doing well on that exam just went up tremendously. Now say you have a teacher that doesn't make you feel welcome, or don't show you the same attention as they do to other students, that would bump your chances of getting a good score even further. That would psychologically take a toll on your body physically as well.  If you were to look at a person in duress, especially something such as discrimination you would notice their limbs looking heavier lower to the ground slouching as if their body is caving in. This reminds me of the article that included an activity where we had to lay down and raise our limbs slowly off the ground in order to feel the weight. Learning about the history of a certain style of dance in order to do it justice has been a new thing for me. This experience has made me think a lot about my past dance classes, where ballet was always the main focal point. It was ingrained in me that it was the foundation, I didn't realize until coming here that says that takes credit away for all other styles of dance. All styles have values and differentiating origins that must be respected. These styles came about because of different cultures and traditions. To say that ballet is the foundation of all of these diverse styles would be a dishonor to all of those who came before us to create them.