Smart Alice Blog: Photography & Curation | Sharing thoughts on music, film, and photo shoots.

Morgen’s White Coat Ceremony

06. September 2014 · Comments Off · Categories: Portrait & Still Life

Ever since she was little Morgen has wanted to be a doctor. She used to wrap her Barbie dolls in “bandages” made of toilet paper. When she was in second grade she memorized the names of all the bones in the human skeleton and always wanted to watch medical movies/TV shows. Now she’s enrolled in medical school at UCSD as an MD/PhD in medical anthropology. There are 125 students in her class.

Congratulations, Morgen! Dad and I are very proud of you. Good luck to you and all your friends in med school!

Janie’s Garden

Lloyd Knight, Dancer with Martha Graham Company

12. July 2014 · Comments Off · Categories: Dance

This was a difficult photo shoot because of the light. It was windy and more and more clouds rolled in, sometimes covering the sun and eventually covering most of the sky. This meant constantly stopping to change exposure settings and the light changing on us during a sequence of shots. This also meant shadows were casting on the dancer. Studio lighting is easier to control but it’s worth the effort outdoors to capture the dancer with a gorgeous background.

A Portrait of Roman

27. May 2014 · Comments Off · Categories: Portrait & Still Life

Roman is the great-grandson of Dr. Samuel Pozzi, the subject of John Singer Sargent’s painting “Dr. Pozzi at Home.” Dr. Pozzi’s daughter, Catherine Pozzi, is Roman’s grandmother.

More on this fascinating family

Born in Bergerac, France in 1846, Dr. Samuel-Jean Pozzi is:

“often described as the ‘father’ of French gynecology, he was one of those responsible in the latter part of the nineteenth century for making surgery safe and effective. As a young intern he participated in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. His experiences with treating war wounds led him to visit Joseph Lister in Scotland in 1876 to study the principles of antisepsis and anesthesia. Pozzi wrote one of the first comprehensive textbooks of surgery on women, in the newly christened field of gynecology. The French published the textbook in 1890 and American publishers printed the first English-language version in 1892.

Ragamala Dance at the Walker Art Center

20. May 2014 · Comments Off · Categories: Dance · Tags: classical Indian dance

May, 2014
Artistic Directors: Ranee Ramaswamy, Aparna Ramaswamy
Song of the Jasmine
Choreography: Ranee Ramaswamy, Aparna Ramaswamy
Music: Rudresh Mahanthappa

luciana achugar at the Walker Art Center

10. April 2014 · Comments Off · Categories: Dance · Tags: luciana achugar; otro teatro

OTRO TEATRO
Choreography by luciana achugar
in collaboration with Zenon Dance Company
Feb., 2014, Walker Art Center
All photos by Alice Gebura Copyright 2014 All Rights Reserved

luciana achugar at the Walker Art Center

4427

NOT BALLET

20. March 2014 · Comments Off · Categories: Event

The expressive power of the human body in both pose and movement is infinite. My goal in photographing dance performance is to capture those transformative moments when choreography, music, and the dancer come together to elevate our sensory, emotional, and intellectual experience as well as our humanity. The following images are from my exhibit of dance photography at the Indian Hill Music Center in Littleton, Massachusetts.

Thank you to everyone who came to the opening. Thank you to Erica Mash for taking photos at the opening.

Meet the Dancers

Abraham in Motion

The Boston Globe named the company’s performance of Pavement at Jacob’s Pillow in August, 2013 one of the year’s best dance performances. Later in 2013 founder Kyle Abraham received a MacArthur Foundation genius grant. Pavement tells the stories of urban Pittsburgh using vivid dance imagery and a very cool soundtrack ranging from Vivaldi to the blues to electronica.
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Companhia Urbana de Danca at the Walker Art Center

19. March 2014 · 1 comment · Categories: Dance · Tags: Brazillian hip-hop, Companhia Urbana, hip-hop dance

Companhia Urbana de Danca at the Walker Art Center

March, 2014
Artistic Director: Sonia Destri Lie
Na Pista
Choreography: Sonia Destri Lie & Company
Music: Rodrigo Marcal
Lighting: Renato Machado

ID: Entidades
Choreography: Sonia Destri Lie & Company
Music: Rodrigo Marcal
Lighting: Renato Machado & Dominique Palabaud

Trisha Brown Company at the Walker Art Center – Astral Convertible

18. March 2014 · Comments Off · Categories: Dance

Choreography: Trisha Brown
Music: John Cage
Costumes: Robert Rauschenberg
Interactive sound and light set: Robert Rauschenberg

The Dying Swan (Le Cynge) and the Art of the Dancer

13. March 2014 · Write a comment · Categories: Film & TV Reviews, The Dying Swan · Tags: choreography, dance interpretation, Le Cynge, The Dying Swan

In 1905 Mikhail Fokine, choreographer for the Ballets Russes, created the choreography “Umirayushtshi Lebedy” (The Dying Swan) for the great Russian dancer Anna Pavlova, also of the Ballet Russes. For music he used “Le Cynge” (The Swan) composed by Camille Saint-Saens for cello and two pianos (today it is arranged for cello and one piano). It depicts a swan’s struggle with death, inspired by the Greek myth of the Mute Swan (an actual species). The swan could not utter a sound throughout its life until just before it died. Like all myths, this one tells an archetypal story; this one a parable about how what is inside emerges into expression.

The work of Fokine, Pavlova, and the Ballets Russes marks historically and artistically one of the greatest turning points in dance (also for art and music), but that’s an interesting topic for another moment. What I want to write about today is how my appreciation for the art of dance has been tutored by watching how great dancers interpret a work.
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