How we accidentally fell into this dance thing

So how did we end up here writing a journal about dance photography. It’s all a bit strange really. Our actual dance journey started (badly) about 10 years ago when we actually tried ballroom dancing (at the dance school started by Len goodman no less). We realised after a year trying to do a ‘pivot heel’ in the waltz when we reached the corner of the room, was only going to end up with a broken ankle or some semi-permanent back injury. That little hobby soon stopped.

We really didn’t like ballet. Simon took Julie to the ballet for her birthday and she found it boring and fell asleep (£150 wasted). We had already photographed a fair few ballerina’s perched on various objects in tutu’s in a couple of workshops and it really didn’t inspire us creatively at all.

We’d been photographing all kinds of things up to that point - bit of street, some travel stuff, random plants and quite a few portraits (which to be fair we were sort of good at). One Sunday we decided to book ourselves on a long exposure ballet shoot at a workshop being held in an East London studio. Don’t ask why - haven’t got a clue.

This workshop was in essence all about using a combination of flash and continuous studio lights to create something a little like the below image (which is one of mine for the record). After messing for quite a while getting the timing right with a very experienced and patient professional ballerina, we sort of quite enjoyed what we were getting on the back of the camera.

Emily Suzuki providing the ballet expertise.

We actually realised by messing around with the lights a bit and the timing we could create some quite interesting effects. To cut a long story short we thought we’d give it a bit of a go all by ourselves, grab some willing ballet dancers, (a whole learning curve in itself).

There was no great plan, no five different collections or creative vision. We were just curious as to what we could do. We ended up being g dragged in for a lot longer than we could imagine!

More to follow…….