Panel discussion on Dance Photography at Drexel’s Mandell Theater on Thursday Oct 16th. 7pm. Free.
(note change: I’d mistakenly posted this as the 17th, but the event is the 16th) 

Three Philadelphia dance photographers will share some of their images and talk about their philosophies on capturing dance as a still image. After individual presentations, the discussion will open up for questions and discussion. After the presentations, the photographers will also be available for informal critiques of student work. 

Participating are Bill Hebert, Bob Emmott, and Jacques-Jean Tiziou (hey that’s me!) 

Please pass along the invitation to anyone interested in dance, photography, or both!

www.jjarchive.net/2008/09/20080912a_HPM
www.jjarchive.net/2008/09/20080913a_HPM
www.jjarchive.net/2008/09/20080914a_HPM 

Many thanks again to all who participated!

Also, many thanks to the friends who came to help facilitate and video:

Ellen Reynolds, Cait Davis, Greg Finnson, Adrianna Carey, Adams Berzins, Aseel Rashid, Star Belmonti, Anna Drozdowski, Jessica Ellis, Lauren Mandilian, Mark O’Maley, Amy Capomacchio, Sarah Zlotnik, David Konyk, Page Widick, Yuval Orr, Andrea Alessi, Mike & Yosma Luby, James Peniston, Nora Berger-Green, Cindy Spitko, Kristin Field, Ana B. Hernández.

Also, many thanks to Studio 34: Yoga, Healing, Arts for letting us take over their beautiful space for the full three days.

The pace was definitely slower than last time around- I’d forgotten that the reason why the last photo sessions were so successful was because I’d put so much work into coordinating getting everyone there. This time around, I was spread a bit thin and so I didn’t do as much of a push to recruit dancers. But so it goes- we had a great time and got some good images. Many thanks especially to the people who came to help out!

Also, two dates to note:

October 4th & 5th: Philadelphia Open Studio Tours
you can stop by and maybe see some fresh prints of a few of these images and more…

October 16th: Panel Discussion on Dance Photography
7pm, Free, Mandell Theater at Drexel University

We’ll be running dance/photo sessions as part of the Live Arts Festival / Philly Fringe.

Friday: 12-7pm 
Saturday: 10-6pm
Sunday: 10-6pm

Bring your music if you need it, and since we’re not scheduling timeslots this time, come early allocate a bit of time in case many people come at the same time.

Studio 34 is at 4522 Baltimore Ave, easily accessible via the #34 trolley.

If you’re not already on the mailing list, sign up here and be sure to check for the confirmation in your inbox! Also, the exhibit of prints from the first photo sessions is still visible in the storefront on 36th street, so if you’re in the area, check it out!

You can help out by spreading the invitation through different community channels, as not all types of dancers in the city will be reading the Fringe guide. Click here for a jpeg that you can email to friends who dance, and there’s a press release that you can download and forward here.

Unlike the last sessions, these will be completely open and unscheduled. This means there may be periods that are slammed and there’s a wait before you can have your turn. Bring your music and be ready to dance- but get there early or be ready to wait a bit! (we’ll make this enjoyable, and you can dance all you want in the warmup space!)

This is going to make it a lot easier on me (coordinating the schedules of 70 dancers last time was a bit of a challenge) - but it does raise one concern: I really don’t want one group to come and block up all the time at the expense of others- so if an entire dance company comes together, we’ll ask you to spread yourselves out a little bit if there are also other participants there, so that we can keep with one of the aims of this project which is to represent a wide range of types of movement. 

Also, please remember that I’ll be photographing people individually or in pairs- the way that we’ve got the space and lighting setup is optimized for that rather than large group pieces. 

I could still use a few volunteers to help run things, so if you’d like to lend a hand, please drop me a line.

Lastly, thank you again to the excellent folks at Studio 34 for again providing their beautiful space to  us.

• Friday Sept 12th ( 12pm-7pm )
• Saturday Sept 13th ( 10am-6pm )
• Sunday Sept 14th ( 10am-6pm ) 

Mark your calendars, and please spread the word to everyone that you know that dances, and have them sign up. Much like last time, we’re going to need a lot of volunteer support to make these things happen, so if you’d like to help, please let me know!

These photo sessions will be happening in conjunction with the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe. If you’re not familiar with the festivals, check out their website, as there are loads of great performances happening in the first two weeks of september.

Also, there’s an installation of images from the preliminary photo sessions now up in the old EMS storefront on 36th street, between Walnut and Sansom. In addition to the prints, there are projections in the upstairs windows by night, starting at 9pm. (There’s a bug with one of the computers, but I should get it fixed tomorrow)  - Please tell your friends to swing by and check it out!

Special thanks are in order:

• to Greg Finnson, Ana B. Hernández, Joe Barber, James Peniston and Andrea Alessi for their help in setting up the installation.
• to Doug Smullens, Greg Finnson, Joe Barber and Stephen Fisher for loaning equipment. 
• to Edward Epstein, Charles Tyson, the University City Arts Leauge and Studio 34 for supporting the installation.
• to the University of Pennsylvania and Eastern Mountain Sports for the use of the space.
• And many thanks to the rest of you for your support!

-jj

I’ll be setting it up on thursday June 12, and could probably use a hand or two, so if you’d like to help, let me know.  

I’m also finalizing plans for some more photo sessions in September in conjunction with the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe. Right now, the plan is to use Studio 34 as a location again, but we’ll only be able to use it for one weekend. If you know of another space that would like to host a series of photo sessions, please have them contact me ASAP. 

Also, the individual images from the first photo sessions are starting to get out there. You can find one of the HPM images of Hua Hua in an exhibit at the Off The Wall Gallery in Dirty Frank’s at 13th and Pine through Aug 1. One lucky person picked up a print of Nyla that was donated to a benefit for City Kitties and Project SAFE. I’ll always be looking for more ways to share these images with the rest of the city, so again, if you know of folks who’d like to exhibit them, send them my way… 

Last note: Make sure that you’re getting the HPM emails!

Some people have signed up but neglected to click on the confirmation, and other people are probably losing the emails to their spam filter. Make sure to sign up, and click that confirmation once you get it- then be sure that “announce@howphillymoves.org” is allowed in your inbox. 

The 46th street installation was the catalyst for this idea, but now that we’ve proven that the community photoshoots are logistically feasible, we’re going to be looking for other avenues for these photo sessions, and other venues to share the images with the city. 

There are a couple things in the works, and definitely will be more photo sessions happening in September. So if you’re not already on the mailing list, hit the Sign Up link and stay tuned…

Many thanks again to everyone who’s helped so far, especially to Mark Monteith and Jay Villa for architectural and engineering support, Anna Drozdowski for great last minute advice, James and Ana for the last minute model building help, and of course all of the volunteers and dancers. 

Here’s what could have been…

Stay tuned for the next evolution of How Philly Moves…

The level of support that this project has been getting from the community is astounding. Not to mention beautiful. The volunteers that helped make the first two photo sessions happen were already pretty fantastic. Now picture this:

James and I were poring over our proposal, trying to make the budget work. Our visions for the space were still coming in way over budget because of the expensive materials that we’re planning on working with. So we decided to cut our salaries pretty drastically and make it a labor of love kind of project, but that alone wasn’t enough. So then we started asking ourselves if we really needed to budget fifteen thousand dollars for union labor installers to actually get our piece in the station…

We knew that we could rally some volunteers, but we figure that to convince SEPTA that it was reasonable to do this thing with volunteers, we should get some relatively solid commitments from people who were professionals, used to working with power tools on scaffolding… and we needed to get that list by the next day if we wanted to make things happen for our budget. This is where my little love affair with the fringe festival tech staff comes in handy…

I sent out an email appeal in the late afternoon, asking if people could give tentative commitments. I figured that if we could get maybe fifteen people to say they were game for it, it wouldn’t be too hard to assemble a good crew of at least six folks for the main part of the installation in the wintertime. 

Within a few hours, we had our crew. Emails, text messages and phone calls continued through till 1:30am, and have kept coming in today. As of this evening, we’ve got forty people on that list! This level of response and support obliterates any doubt that we’ll be able to pull this off. And of course, if you know anyone else that would be interesting in being part of the installation crew, please have them contact me. It won’t hurt to have even more people on that list.

Wow. Did I mention that I love you guys?

Thank you!

-jj

Our proposal has shifted a good bit since our first conceptions. It’s been an interesting evolution… The main major difference is that our final proposal is totally static, with no digital component. Well, I wouldn’t say “static” - The images are pretty dyamic, and the installation will be awesome. But the images won’t be changing (in this space, anyways..) 

It became clear as we researched that the digital installation really wasn’t suitable for the space and budget- once you start looking at individual projectors that cost $150,000 and only last a few years, a permanent installation gets pretty ridiculously over budget pretty fast. The maintenance infrastructure was also a prohibitively complicated thing for this installation. 

One of the positive things about this change, is that we get an installation that’s guaranteed to last with no problems. The ceramic enamel on steel panels that well use will last a lifetime. The downside is that while we’ll be representing a super huge cross section of dance in the city, we won’t be able to physically depict thousands of dancers as we’d hoped. In this particular installation, anyways…

The exciting thing is that “How Philly Moves” is spinning off into it’s own project, and has the potential to start with the 46th street station and go in many directions beyond that. We’re still interested in doing a digital architectural installation, so we’ll be looking for another venue for that. (We could put a big LED wall on the side of a building, or a series of TVs in a storefront. Or both!) We’re also talking about doing a series of smaller installations in parks around the city. Maybe partner with Mural Arts to do a series of murals… As we build this image collection, they could be shared with the community in so many ways.  If you’ve got a creative suggestion as to how you’d like to see this project evolve, let us know!

Next tuesday are the presentations to the panel. I’m not quite sure how long it will take them to decide after that, but regardless, we’re going to keep moving forward with this. We’re definitely hosting a photo session or several in september as part of Fringe Festival. The good folks at The Rock School have tentatively offered a space for us for that shoot. We’re also talking to everyone at First Person Arts about hosting a photo session in conjunction with one of their salons. Keep an eye out for updates, and wish us luck for next tuesday!