Veil photos, then and now
Aug. 1st, 2008 05:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
parasitegirlPost to take care of you while I am away
Looking at the pictures Ellen sent me I'm struck by one thing: These are the veil shots I did not get in my first photo shoot with Nam.
Photo by Ellen Nepilly, July 2008
Nam was my first dance photoshoot, period. Me not getting those shots then had nothing to do with Nam as a photographer and everything to do with how I have changed as a model and a dancer over the last nine months. I couldn’t have done what it takes to get these shots then, I wasn’t ready.
Nine months ago, my veil was not my friend. When I did my first photo shoot with The Tokyo Group in February, the veil was not my friend…no matter how much the photographers loved it…so I guess we could call it my troublesome trophy husband. It would be better to say that my veil was my bad roommate, the other I was stuck with for a while because I couldn’t always go it alone….situations called for us to be together.
When I started at the restaurant my veil wanted things other than what I wanted: it desired up close looks at lamps, heads, and was occasionally hungry for food; I wanted it to obey me.
At home my veils and I worked things out. I couldn’t NOT bring it out in public with me every week. At first I wasn’t happy about it, but in time things have been working themselves out.
Veils don’t stop having personalities. They don’t change for you. Dancers learn how to relate to the unique personalities of their veils. You can’t get a veil to do everything you want. It is only when you come to accept that and stop trying to make your veil do things via hand and arm commands and force of will that you can move forward to the ultimate goal of making the veil an extension of yourself.
My veil does not complete me. We’re cautious friends. I know local dancers who have passionate love affairs with their veils, like Farasha and Mishaal. I also know a few dancers who have that goofy comfortable love with their veils, like Henna. Let us all pause and curse Henna for her luck getting Aziza as a first teacher…I once saw my first teacher take a small potted palm tree out with her veil. We will never speak of the few moves I cannot in all seriousness do because I saw my first teacher do them. There are reasons you rarely see me make a “tent” of my veil.
When I look at the latest round of pictures I see what I missed in my first ever shoot. First and foremost in the changes is the relaxation in my face. In my first shots you can see that I am concentrating on working with my veil and concentrating on looking serene. This face is something that Michael Baxter made me aware of when we worked on turns. I did not shoot any veil work with Michael, but I did a lot of turns. He was quick to show me shots where my obvious thought about turns played across my face and ruined some lovely pictures.
Good shots with Michael Baxter, December 2007
From that point on I worked on mentally staying in the music even when executing dynamic barrel turns or other tricky spins. I carried that over into my first Tokyo Group photoshoot, but I still had a tricky partner with my veil.
Going back to my Nam shoot.
My veil work succeeds, for the veil those are the shapes I thought I wanted, but that concentration killed my face. That tense or blank expression made me visually subordinate to the veil…which is a rather accurate summation of what was going on. My teacher, Mishaal, is all about veil work as an act of surrendering to the veil. I ascribe to that to a large degree. Watching her has raised the bar for what I can watch people do to veils. Aggressive veil work makes me physically uncomfortable. Watching a dancer exert force ruins the effect. Being subordinate is not the same as surrendering. Surrendering means that you accept that there are things you cannot control with the veil and will go with the flow…being subordinate means that the veil has whipped you…. and, as I mentioned, Dom veilers make me squirm. Agility and skill with the veil is not the same thing as actively bending it to your will.
Nam photos: Pretty...but not quite there!
October 2007
Some of my favorite veil shots from this latest shoot are ones in which you can’t see my face, but can see my figure through the veil. These, like the amazing blue shots from my first Tokyo Group shoot, are not ones I could necessarily use to promote myself as an individual dancer, but that doesn’t decrease my love of them. These shots don’t speak about me as a dancer, but they speak volumes about what dancing with a veil is about for me…that surrender. The shots are more universal than specific. I can point to those shots and say “That is how veil feels.” In a similar way, certain posed shots that have little to do with how a dancer would actually move can often capture the personality of a specific dancer in a way that sometimes motion shots cannot illustrate.
Those veil shots, like the blue shots, are the moments I know I am working with photographers who don’t work with many bellydancers. Photographers who cater to dancer have a reason to guide veil work to moments where the dancer’s face and body are exposed, to create balance between dancer and veil, because they know what a dancer needs for promotional purposes. The Tokyo Group loves the veil and motion of the veil. They sometimes ask me to do things that I wouldn’t do in a performance (like back bending floor work with veil work…I don’t have those shots yet) because something in the motion captivates them. I try what they ask, knowing that what results might capture soemthign of the dance, or something beautiful that is purely about the art of photography outside of documentation.
My relationship with my veil and my awareness that I need to keep my head in my music to prevent tension on my face are two things that have changed in the last nine months, but getting the veil closer to the ideal of “an extension of you” isn’t worth shit if you have lousy extensions.
The potentionally traumatic part of the Michael Baxter experience is the fact that he gives you every last image he shoots. He believes in hug breaks, he does not believe in the delete button. I had 3 DVDs, well over a thousand images, to wade through when I left San Francisco on January 1st. Viewing that many images of yourself in motion is bound to bring up some insecurities and reveal some flaws. Your insecurities come mostly from the moments that look great in motion but look horrid frozen, the largest being the belly roll bulges or the folds of skin created in hip lifts. You just have to put those out of your mind. The flaws, however, are what you need to work on. I eliminated piles of images from my first DVDs because of one thing: bad hands. In so many pictures my hands dropped at the wrist, killing the extension lines of my arms, or tensed up, freezing the line before it could extend. I had enough good pictures that I never felt the need to bend my wrist in photoshop to get some workable images, but I could not unsee those hands. Unlike the temporary bulges of motion that actually signify full movements, bad lines are more than photo problems, they will plague your performances. From that point I refocused my mind on extending the lines through my wrists and out my fingertips.
Because your veil work comes from your upperbody, arms, and hands, better extensions and lines make for better veil work…which is starting to show in these latest pictures.
By no stretch of the imagination have I overcome my weaknesses with veil, photo/performance face, or upper-body extensions. These are not things you get good at and then stop working on. These are things that you can always find paths to explore. These are things you don’t stop working on. But these photos show me that I have made progress on specific issues I have been working on, and that, like the ads say, is priceless.
Looking at the pictures Ellen sent me I'm struck by one thing: These are the veil shots I did not get in my first photo shoot with Nam.
Photo by Ellen Nepilly, July 2008
Nam was my first dance photoshoot, period. Me not getting those shots then had nothing to do with Nam as a photographer and everything to do with how I have changed as a model and a dancer over the last nine months. I couldn’t have done what it takes to get these shots then, I wasn’t ready.
Nine months ago, my veil was not my friend. When I did my first photo shoot with The Tokyo Group in February, the veil was not my friend…no matter how much the photographers loved it…so I guess we could call it my troublesome trophy husband. It would be better to say that my veil was my bad roommate, the other I was stuck with for a while because I couldn’t always go it alone….situations called for us to be together.
When I started at the restaurant my veil wanted things other than what I wanted: it desired up close looks at lamps, heads, and was occasionally hungry for food; I wanted it to obey me.
At home my veils and I worked things out. I couldn’t NOT bring it out in public with me every week. At first I wasn’t happy about it, but in time things have been working themselves out.
Veils don’t stop having personalities. They don’t change for you. Dancers learn how to relate to the unique personalities of their veils. You can’t get a veil to do everything you want. It is only when you come to accept that and stop trying to make your veil do things via hand and arm commands and force of will that you can move forward to the ultimate goal of making the veil an extension of yourself.
My veil does not complete me. We’re cautious friends. I know local dancers who have passionate love affairs with their veils, like Farasha and Mishaal. I also know a few dancers who have that goofy comfortable love with their veils, like Henna. Let us all pause and curse Henna for her luck getting Aziza as a first teacher…I once saw my first teacher take a small potted palm tree out with her veil. We will never speak of the few moves I cannot in all seriousness do because I saw my first teacher do them. There are reasons you rarely see me make a “tent” of my veil.
When I look at the latest round of pictures I see what I missed in my first ever shoot. First and foremost in the changes is the relaxation in my face. In my first shots you can see that I am concentrating on working with my veil and concentrating on looking serene. This face is something that Michael Baxter made me aware of when we worked on turns. I did not shoot any veil work with Michael, but I did a lot of turns. He was quick to show me shots where my obvious thought about turns played across my face and ruined some lovely pictures.
Good shots with Michael Baxter, December 2007
From that point on I worked on mentally staying in the music even when executing dynamic barrel turns or other tricky spins. I carried that over into my first Tokyo Group photoshoot, but I still had a tricky partner with my veil.
Going back to my Nam shoot.
My veil work succeeds, for the veil those are the shapes I thought I wanted, but that concentration killed my face. That tense or blank expression made me visually subordinate to the veil…which is a rather accurate summation of what was going on. My teacher, Mishaal, is all about veil work as an act of surrendering to the veil. I ascribe to that to a large degree. Watching her has raised the bar for what I can watch people do to veils. Aggressive veil work makes me physically uncomfortable. Watching a dancer exert force ruins the effect. Being subordinate is not the same as surrendering. Surrendering means that you accept that there are things you cannot control with the veil and will go with the flow…being subordinate means that the veil has whipped you…. and, as I mentioned, Dom veilers make me squirm. Agility and skill with the veil is not the same thing as actively bending it to your will.
Nam photos: Pretty...but not quite there!
October 2007
Some of my favorite veil shots from this latest shoot are ones in which you can’t see my face, but can see my figure through the veil. These, like the amazing blue shots from my first Tokyo Group shoot, are not ones I could necessarily use to promote myself as an individual dancer, but that doesn’t decrease my love of them. These shots don’t speak about me as a dancer, but they speak volumes about what dancing with a veil is about for me…that surrender. The shots are more universal than specific. I can point to those shots and say “That is how veil feels.” In a similar way, certain posed shots that have little to do with how a dancer would actually move can often capture the personality of a specific dancer in a way that sometimes motion shots cannot illustrate.
Those veil shots, like the blue shots, are the moments I know I am working with photographers who don’t work with many bellydancers. Photographers who cater to dancer have a reason to guide veil work to moments where the dancer’s face and body are exposed, to create balance between dancer and veil, because they know what a dancer needs for promotional purposes. The Tokyo Group loves the veil and motion of the veil. They sometimes ask me to do things that I wouldn’t do in a performance (like back bending floor work with veil work…I don’t have those shots yet) because something in the motion captivates them. I try what they ask, knowing that what results might capture soemthign of the dance, or something beautiful that is purely about the art of photography outside of documentation.
My relationship with my veil and my awareness that I need to keep my head in my music to prevent tension on my face are two things that have changed in the last nine months, but getting the veil closer to the ideal of “an extension of you” isn’t worth shit if you have lousy extensions.
The potentionally traumatic part of the Michael Baxter experience is the fact that he gives you every last image he shoots. He believes in hug breaks, he does not believe in the delete button. I had 3 DVDs, well over a thousand images, to wade through when I left San Francisco on January 1st. Viewing that many images of yourself in motion is bound to bring up some insecurities and reveal some flaws. Your insecurities come mostly from the moments that look great in motion but look horrid frozen, the largest being the belly roll bulges or the folds of skin created in hip lifts. You just have to put those out of your mind. The flaws, however, are what you need to work on. I eliminated piles of images from my first DVDs because of one thing: bad hands. In so many pictures my hands dropped at the wrist, killing the extension lines of my arms, or tensed up, freezing the line before it could extend. I had enough good pictures that I never felt the need to bend my wrist in photoshop to get some workable images, but I could not unsee those hands. Unlike the temporary bulges of motion that actually signify full movements, bad lines are more than photo problems, they will plague your performances. From that point I refocused my mind on extending the lines through my wrists and out my fingertips.
Because your veil work comes from your upperbody, arms, and hands, better extensions and lines make for better veil work…which is starting to show in these latest pictures.
By no stretch of the imagination have I overcome my weaknesses with veil, photo/performance face, or upper-body extensions. These are not things you get good at and then stop working on. These are things that you can always find paths to explore. These are things you don’t stop working on. But these photos show me that I have made progress on specific issues I have been working on, and that, like the ads say, is priceless.
