on RawMoves
Corinne rehearses for RawMoves's upcoming reprise of Story of Eight which opens October 8 at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center.
Dancers, like all performers, are liars. Watch us on stage and what we portray is something not entirely ourselves at that moment in time. We leave behind the car that cut us off on the way the theatre, the girl that didn’t bother to call back, the current state of American politics. We leave that all at the door to become the character we’re to dance that night. Our costumes are freshly cleaned and steamed, the stage still wet after having been mopped, the lights designed to flatter the dancer and choreography. We present something that takes you away from this world to bring you into the choreographer’s vision. We lie. And you, the audience, are ultimately left in a different place than before.
Step into a rehearsal and things are different. The whole of the stage is visible, the light isn’t quite so flattering, our clothes are a mishmash of what’s clean and appropriate to wear. You can see the aches and pains of too many weeks of heavy rehearsal, the bit of choreography we just learned that is still a bit fresh in the body, and all too often our moods follow us from outside the studio. In the studio during rehearsal is where I, the dancer, can be seen. This is the place where real magic happens, where the seeds are sewn for that alternate world in which we invite the audience for too few nights.
RawMoves Dance is a part-time modern dance company founded by Nicholas Cendese and Natosha Washington. I’ve had the opportunity to work as their resident photographer for the last two years and their dance is simply stunning, their dancers marvelous. For some time now I’ve wanted to create frames from rehearsal that were more than just documenting the process but more a portrait of the dancers and their craft. If one company could give that to me in Salt Lake City, it was RawMoves and their upcoming reprise of “The Story of Eight.” Between the choreography and the dancers themselves, I knew the frames would all-but compose themselves. And they did. Please enjoy this gallery at my facebook page.
