319 WATCH BATTERY

As most of my regular viewers know, I have been battling depression for the past several years, although mine is of the situational variety rather than the clinical. And as I have also frequently mentioned both here and elsewhere, ballroom dancing, considered strictly in terms of its value as therapy, is easily the best thing I have ever done. Simply put, it makes me happy; and if I can't be out on the floor dancing, being able to photograph it is the next-best thing. To the surprise of some, I did not follow the most recent season of "So You Think You Can Dance," which concluded just a few days ago; but perhaps my best explanation for this is that I prefer to participate actively in dancing, and at a competition or other dance-related event with camera in hand, I am at least doing so in some sense. But I can't do that merely by looking at a TV screen, although after thinking it over for a few days, perhaps I should have watched the program anyway.

A couple of years ago, I had a valuable moment of insight which, like so many good things that have happened to me in the comparitively recent past, came about as a direct result of my involvement with dancing. During a time of acute personal crisis, I attended one of the practice parties at the Fred Astaire studio, but since I was feeling pretty low that evening, I sat out all but three of the dances. (For those three, I was grabbed by some of the female instructors.) As usual, the party ended after 45 minutes, and my insights both came to me in quick succession as I walked out to my car. The first was that coming to the party and not dancing more than I did that evening was a numbskull thing to do. The second was that even though I had sat out all but three of the dances, I STILL felt better than I did before arriving at the studio. Or to express the idea in another way, the dumbest thing I had done that day was to sit on the sidelines throughout most of the practice party, although the smartest was that I had chosen to attend it in the first place.

The moral of the story, I realized, was that I needed to dance, period. Whenever I attend one of the events nowadays, shyness still inhibits me sometimes from approaching someone I don't know and asking to dance, but even that barrier is gradually coming down; in any event, whenever I make it to one of the parties now, I rarely sit out a dance.

I thought of all that once again as I watched this couple perform and snapped away with my camera. The woman shown here with instructor Sean Emad is a longtime Fred Astaire student named Cheryl, who, even in the cozy and family-like studio culture, is regarded by everyone there with an unusual degree of affection. If I had no other clues as to the reason, I would have picked up a few as I reviewed her pictures on my computer; her personality came through in all of them, as did the sheer joy she experiences from dancing. Cheryl is a far better dancer than I am, but this is something I can understand very well.

I promised Cheryl a few good pictures of her performance, and I hope she likes this one. I sat on the very front row and used my 85mm lens throughout the shoot, and because I was so close to the action and restricted by the narrow angle of view that is always one of the drawbacks of a prime lens, part of her foot is, unfortunately, outside the frame. In retrospect, I should have used my 50mm f/1.8 instead, but as it was, I just wasn't quite far enough away to enable me to include that little detail. But my instinct tells me that she won't care, and that she and the other members of the studio crowd will probably love this photo. Doing this for Cheryl was a joy all by itself.

There is an amusing afterword to this story. After the showcase had ended, I spotted Cheryl holding court with a group of people who surrounded her in a semicircle, listening intently to her as she went through her post-performance debriefing. I approached her from behind, intending to let her know that I had taken some good pictures of her performance, and that these would soon appear on Flickr. Absorbed in her discussion and facing away from me, she was unaware of my approach. Just as I came up to her and was about at her 8:00 position, she made an expansive gesture with her arms -- and smacked me right in the face, to her own horror and the amusement of everyone else, including me. I couldn't resist the chance to get in a little teasing, and I told Cheryl that I had just wanted to tell her about my pictures, but if she was going to beat up on me that way, to heck with it. If I am ever at a party attended by Cheryl and am expected to give her some kind of white-elephant gift, I think it will be a pair of boxing gloves!

I was flipping through the TV at an inappropriately late hour, and I went past one of those retro movie channels, and something caught my eye. There was a fantasy movie on that looked really dark and mysterious, very similar to a Guillermo del Toro film ("Pan's Labyrinth", "Hell Boy"), he is one of my all time favorite directors, who specializes in over the top costuming and elegant horror, if that makes any sense.

As I was watching this curious movie, The hero (A young Tom Cruise) was trying to rescue a Princess from the Devil (or something?). I checked the channel listings and discovered it was called "Legend", after a little more investigation, it turns out it is a 1985 fantasy film, directed by Ridley Scott. I immediately investigated this man, curious to find out what other films he may have directed, and sure enough, he has a very extensive resume. He directed the horror movies "Alien" and "Hannibal", which are both massively popular.

Once scene, the Princess was alone in, what I assumed to be Hell, and the cheesy narrator (with a goofy computer enhanced voice to make him sound otherworldly), said the devil was going to try and seduce her. Then suddenly, a dark, ominous creature appears out of the shadows, and begins to dance. This caught my eye, because the (woman's?) proportions were really odd, elongated and frail. Yet, it danced around in a very eerie way. The horror of it was the unexpected, you didn't know what it was going to do, and that's what I loved about this scene, so much so, I spent over an hour tracking down the clip, so I could screen-cap it, so I could share in this journal.

The costume was genius, it was similar to the "dementors" from the Harry Potter films, but the difference was, this, unlike Harry Potter, was not computer enhanced, it was all costume and direction. The dancer whom they hired did an excellent job maintaining that creepy posture and indifference to the Princess. The elongated arms, and wispy dress worked really well in creating the atmosphere of the scene. The best part, for me, was the head. It was totally black, this for me sold it. It was minimalist while maintaining the wonder of extravagance. The director resisted the urge to put a crazy wig on the dancer, which would have ruined the effect. Less is more when it came to this particular scene, a job well done.