joffrey ballet

Music, Ballet & The Russian Masters

September 9, 2013 by 4dancers

Joanna Wozniak, Sacre du Printemps, photo by Herbert Migdoll

Today we have Conductor Scott Speck with us to talk about the music for the Joffrey’s upcoming “Russian Masters” program. The company will perform Allegro Brillante (Balanchine/Tchaikovsky), Bells (Possokhov/Rachmaninoff), Adagio (Possokhov/Khachaturian) and Nijinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) – with music by Stravinsky.

What are some of the particular challenges in preparing the Chicago Philharmonic to play for Joffrey’s upcoming Russian Masters program?

This is a brilliant program, masterfully constructed by the Joffrey’s visionary Artistic Director, Ashley Wheater. I love every piece on the program, both choreographically and musically. Together, these pieces present a number of fascinating challenges. Although all the composers in this program came from roughly the same region of the world, their styles are markedly different. The musicians have to shift gears very quickly from music that is suave, elegant and melodic to music that is dissonant and brutal. In addition to that is the question of endurance: this is a physically taxing program for the musicians, as well as for the dancers. One of our piano soloists, Kuang-Hao Huang, has to play an athletic Tchaikovsky piano concerto, and then shift gears and tackle a set of devilishly difficult Rachmaninoff preludes. All of this takes place in the orchestra pit, of course, and I hope that the audience remembers to pay attention to the feats of athleticism taking place underneath the stage as well as on it.

You will be conducting the music of four different composers that evening; Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky and Khachaturian. Which is the most difficult–and why?

By far our most difficult task — and also the most fun — is preparing Stravinsky’s masterpiece The Rite of Spring. This piece was once considered practically impossible to perform, because it often calls for instruments to play at the extremes of their ranges, with seemingly unpredictable changes in meter. Luckily, the musicians of the Chicago Philharmonic are some of the best in the world; they can do anything. They see this piece as a fun challenge, and I’m sure they will simply tear it up. (In a good way!)

Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) was a very controversial piece when it debuted in 1913 in Paris, danced by Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes company. Nijinsky’s choreography was part of the reason for this, but how did the music contribute to the audience’s reaction?

Controversial is right — the first performance created an actual riot, one of the few in the history of music! I think the music contributed to this chaos in three ways.

First of all, it is dissonant — or more to the point, it is poly-tonal, meaning that it’s in more than one key at a time. You might have one set of instruments playing it E major while another group play in E-flat. Nobody was used to this kind of “harmony” before.

Secondly, the rhythm is unpredictable, and that is very unsettling. Even the wildest, most dissonant rock music usually has a steady beat. But in this piece, the beat sometimes changes in every measure. The result is that unless you know the piece intimately, you never know what the rhythm is going to do next. There’s even a famous section near the beginning of Part One where at least four different meters are competing for the same moment of time. It’s the sonic equivalent of the earth shifting under you feet.

Third, and finally, we have to admit that the first orchestra to play this work, faced with groundbreaking polyrhythms and polytonality, and trying to make sense of a piece that they had never heard before, probably didn’t play it very well. I have heard a recording from a great orchestra of Paris in the 1940s — over thirty years later, with the same conductor (Pierre Monteux) who led the premiere — and it still didn’t sound very good. The musicians have to know what they are trying to express before they can get it across to the audience. Today, our orchestra musicians are so well-versed in this great masterpiece that we will have the opposite challenge: trying to make it sound unfamiliar enough.

Joffrey Ballet, Le Sacre du Printemps, Stacy Joy Keller, Erica Lynette Edwards, Jennifer Goodman; credit Herbert Migdoll

How is the music for this ballet historically significant?

Because of the riot itself, the piece will always be historically significant. But there were much more far-reaching ramifications for the history of music. After Stravinsky’s ground-breaking experiment in polytonality and polyrhythm, every other composer of the 1900s had to define himself or herself in relation to this piece. That is, either they decided to continue Stravinsky’s bold experiment, or they decided to reject it and carry on in spite of it. But everybody had to grapple with it; nobody could ignore it. And so The Rite of Spring changed the course of music history. It is hands down the most important piece of the twentieth century.

Because it is difficult to count, dancers sometimes find Stravinsky’s music challenging. As a conductor, is there anything you can do to try and make this easier for them?

The best thing that the orchestra and I can do for the dancers is to be consistent. The dancers have learned to count and memorize these unpredictable rhythms, and they could probably sing the piece note-for-note, at least the sections in which they are dancing. Now my goal is to present this ever-changing landscape to them consistently. It may be a moving target, but if it moves the same way each time, the dancers will have a good chance of hitting it.

Is there a particular section of the ballet that you particularly enjoy?

My favorite section is the last part, the sacrificial dance, in which the Chosen One dances herself to death. This is the section with the trickiest and least predictable rhythms to play — but if you study and practice it a lot (for decades, in my case!), you get into this marvelous groove that you can really feel in your body. This is the most difficult section for the solo dancer as well — she leaps some 90 times in a matter of minutes.

Because of these challenges, both for the dancers and the orchestra, Le sacre du printemps is very rarely performed. And in the reconstruction of the Nijinsky version, it is almost never performed. These will be the Joffrey Ballet’s final performances during this Centennial year, so I urge people not to miss it.

Joffrey’s “Russian Masters” program runs from Sept. 19th to Sept. 22nd at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago.

With recent performances in London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, Contributor Scott Speck has inspired international acclaim as a conductor of passion, intelligence and winning personality.

Scott Speck’s recent concerts with the Moscow RTV Symphony Orchestra in Tchaikovsky Hall garnered unanimous praise. His gala performances with Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Midori, Evelyn Glennie and Olga Kern have highlighted his recent and current seasons as Music Director of the Mobile Symphony. This season he also collaborates intensively with Carnegie Hall for the seventh time as Music Director of the West Michigan Symphony. He was recently named Music Director of the Joffrey Ballet; and he was invited to the White House as Music Director of the Washington Ballet.

In recent seasons Scott Speck has conducted at London’s Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, the Paris Opera, Washington’s Kennedy Center, San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House, and the Los Angeles Music Center. He has led numerous performances with the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Houston, Chicago (Sinfonietta), Paris, Moscow, Shanghai, Beijing, Vancouver, Romania, Slovakia, Buffalo, Columbus (OH), Honolulu, Louisville, New Orleans, Oregon, Rochester, Florida, and Virginia, among many others.

Previously he held positions as Conductor of the San Francisco Ballet; Music Advisor and Conductor of the Honolulu Symphony; and Associate Conductor of the Los Angeles Opera. During a recent tour of Asia he was named Principal Guest Conductor of the China Film Philharmonic in Beijing.

In addition, Scott Speck is the co-author of two of the world’s best-selling books on classical music for a popular audience, Classical Music for Dummies and Opera for Dummies. These books have received stellar reviews in both the national and international press and have garnered enthusiastic endorsements from major American orchestras. They have been translated into twenty languages and are available around the world. His third book in the series, Ballet for Dummies, was released to great acclaim as well.

Scott Speck has been a regular commentator on National Public Radio, the BBC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and Voice of Russia, broadcast throughout the world. His writing has been featured in numerous magazines and journals.

Born in Boston, Scott Speck graduated summa cum laude from Yale University. There he founded and directed the Berkeley Chamber Orchestra, which continues to perform to this day. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Berlin, where he founded Concerto Grosso Berlin, an orchestra dedicated to the performances of Baroque and Classical music in a historically informed style. He received his Master’s Degree with highest honors from the University of Southern California, served as a Conducting Fellow at the Aspen School of Music, and studied at the Tanglewood Music Center. He is fluent in English, German and French, has a diploma in Italian, speaks Spanish and has a reading knowledge of Russian.

Scott Speck can be reached at www.scottspeck.org

The Spice Of Life

April 29, 2013 by 4dancers

Hubbard Street 2 Dancers Lissa Smith, left, and Alicia Delgadillo in one5two4three by Taryn Kaschock Russell. Photo by Todd Rosenberg.

by Lissa Smith

One of many special things about working at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago is the opportunity to dive into a variety of works, both new and existing. As a dancer, having a piece created on you allows an immediate personal connection with the choreographer and the choreography. It provides the opportunity to take ownership.

In contrast, learning and performing a revival presents the chance to step into a different pair of shoes. I have equal admiration for both creative and restaging processes, and in my recent work with Hubbard Street 2, I’ve done both — simultaneously.

On May 4, 2013, HS2 performs with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as part of its family-friendly “Get Up and Dance” series. I’ll perform excerpts from the famous Martha Graham work, Appalachian Spring (1944).

I began intense training in Graham technique at the age of nine. I took Graham master classes once a week at my dance studio with an incredible teacher, Peter London, who was and is a great mentor. He encouraged me to audition for, and later attend, New World School of the Arts, where I had the opportunity to study Graham technique in further depth.

During my four years at New World, I performed renowned Martha Graham works such as Diversion of Angels (the Couple in Yellow) and “Conversation of Lovers” within the piece Acts of Light, both staged by London. Throughout the years, I have also studied at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance in New York, and I have enjoyed seeing the Martha Graham Dance Company perform many times. I am always moved by their passion and language. Their repertory transports me into their scenario and has me follow their dramatic story line from start to finish.

Yuriko, left, and Hubbard Street 2 Dancer Lissa Smith at the Boston Conservatory. Photo by Giulia Pline.

My sophomore year at the Boston Conservatory, where I was pursuing a BFA in dance performance, I was privileged to work with former Graham dancers Yuriko and her daughter, Susan Kikuchi, on the restaging of Martha Graham’s piece Frontier. This happened to also be the last Graham work that Yuriko would restage.

Never in my life could I have predicted that here, at Hubbard Street, I would have the opportunity to perform yet another piece by Martha Graham. My costume arrived at our studios the other day and, coincidentally, it is the same dress that my current director, Taryn Kaschock Russell, wore when she performed this same piece with the Joffrey Ballet. In the dance world, the passing of a costume is like passing the torch; it’s incredibly exciting and meaningful to me and I’m grateful and honored to work with Susan Kikuchi again on Appalachian Spring. To be able to perform this masterwork, passed down through generations of dancers, is a dream come true.

Hubbard Street’s next hometown performances are June 6–16, our second annual danc(e)volve: New Works Festival at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The danc(e)volve choreographers are all company members, selected from the previous year’s Inside/Out Choreographic Workshop at the UIC Theatre. (Save the date for our next Inside/Out, coming up on July 6!) These choreographers are asked to either expand their projects or create brand-new works for danc(e)volve.

Working with Andrew Wright, a fellow HS2 dancer, on his new piece has been a bonding experience for our company. We are all so eager and hungry to try new things, to really explore, and our excitement provides fuel for each other’s creative energy. A different side of each one of us has emerged as we learn Andy’s specific movement style and get to know his approach to directing.

I chatted with Andy about his piece and he said, “The process turned out to be completely different than I expected, going into it. I had all these grand ideas, thoughts, and inspirations, but at the end of the day, when I took a step back and just allowed myself to be present in the studio with my cast, things just ended up flowing. The piece ended up going in a much more personal direction than I had originally intended, but I understand why it had to.”

Andrew Wright Taryn Kaschock Russell Susan Kikuchi Lissa Smith photo Kristen Brogdon — From left: Hubbard Street 2 Dancers Lissa Smith and Andrew Wright; HS2 Director Taryn Kashock Russell, and Martha Graham repetiteur Susan Kikuchi. Photo by Kristen Brogdon.

I asked him to elaborate. “These past two years at Hubbard Street have had a profound effect on my life,” he explained, “and I think that comes across in the work. At the end of the day, when I watch it, I see us. I see our experiences. I see Hubbard Street 2.”

Having a coworker at the helm of the studio has been inspiring. There are definitely times when we all laugh and goof off, as friends do, but we are a focused group of committed dancers, and we give Andy the respect and attention he deserves — and we can’t wait to share his piece with audiences next month.

Another work I’ll perform during danc(e)volve is a duet for myself and Richard Walters, another fellow HS2 dancer, with comedic cameos by main company member Quinn B Wharton. It’s a portrait, really, of Ricky’s and my different, strong personalities, anxieties and habits. Making it even more personal is the fact that Terry recorded, edited, and arranged our voices to make the piece’s score.

There’s nothing like rehearsing to the sound of your own voice. It’s fulfilling (and refreshing!) to spend a rehearsal day rehearsing three projects so different from each other. Terry’s piece is very versatile, and is choreographed around a small table and two chairs. We will perform this at danc(e)volve and at Chicago City Winery on May 6, as part of Hubbard Street 2’s opening act for Fear No Art’s “The Dinner Party.” The choreography is extremely detailed and fast-moving, which keeps Ricky and me on the edges of our seats — literally!

More of Terry’s new choreography shares our program with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Appalachian Spring. He’s been the main company’s rehearsal director since 2010 but, at the end of this month, our current director Taryn Kaschock Russell departs with her family for New York and Terry takes over as director of Hubbard Street 2. I’m so grateful to be having this experience during the transition. Although I will truly miss working with Taryn, I’m very excited for all that’s in store for Hubbard Street 2 — which you’ll hear more about in my next guest post, here at 4dancers.org. Thanks for reading!

Catch Lissa Smith and Hubbard Street 2 onstage:

• May 4 at Symphony Center, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

• May 6 at Chicago City Winery for “The Dinner Party” (also streamed live online)

• May 11 at Ramsey Auditorium in Batavia, Illinois as part of Fermilab’s 2012–13 Arts & Lecture Series

• May 30 at the Harris Theater, during Hubbard Street’s 35^th Anniversary Spotlight Ball

• June 6–16 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, for danc(e)volve: New Works Festival

Contributor Lissa Smith, age 21, was born and raised in Miami, Florida. She is currently dancing with Hubbard Street 2 of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. She attended The Boston Conservatory where she was both a Dance Conservatory Scholarship recipient and Jan Veen Dance Scholarship recipient.

Lissa has trained at the prestigious Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, The Juilliard School, Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet, The Martha Graham School, The Joffrey Ballet School and The Joffrey Midwest Workshop. Lissa has worked with world renowned choreographers such as: Thang Dao, Peter London, Alberto Del Saz, Maurya Kerr, Clébio Oliveira, Penny Saunders, Hofesh Shecter, Didy Veldman, Uri Sands, Gregory Dawson, Stephen Pier, John Magnus, Josée Garant, Viktor Plotnikov, Robyn Mineko Williams, Tony Fabre, and Judith Jamison. She has danced principal roles such as: “Yellow Girl” in “Diversion of Angels”, “Conversation of Lovers” within “Acts of Light” and “Frontier”, the solo choreographed by Martha Graham and staged by Yuriko and Susan Kikuchi along with Yasuko Tokunaga.

Lissa was the soloist lead dancer in both Thang Dao’s contemporary ballet, “Foil” and Greg Dawson’s contemporary ballet, “Eclipsing Venus”. She has also performed Jose Limon’s “Choreographic Offerings” staged by Jennifer Scanlon and Libby Nye. Lissa has performed the “Doll with Broken Head” solo from within “Mechanical Organ” choreographed by Alwin Nikolais, staged by Alberto Del Saz. Lissa received the “Modern Dance Award” and the “Dean’s Dance Award” upon her graduation from New World School of the Arts High School in June 2009 and won the “Arts For Life!” dance scholarship in 2009 presented by Former First Lady Columba Bush.

In 2012, Lissa was awarded the Martha Hill Young Professional Award.

Lissa’s posts on 4dancers are her own opinion and in no way reflect the thoughts or opinions of her employer, Hubbard Street 2.

Why Othello Is The Best Ballet Of The Last 30 Years

April 23, 2013 by 4dancers

Joffrey Ballet Othello 2009 — Fabrice Calmels and April Daly in Othello, Photo by Herbert Migdoll

by Scott Speck

This week the Joffrey Ballet embarks on its encore production of Othello: A Dance in Three Acts, with choreograhy by Lar Lubovitch and music by Elliot Goldenthal. This is my favorite ballet to conduct, and for good reason: It’s the greatest full-length ballet of the past 30 years.

The Joffrey’s visionary Artistic Director Ashley Wheater really stuck his neck out when, very early in his tenure, he brought Othello to the Joffrey. As far as anyone in Chicago knew, this was a huge financial risk. This ballet was originally so expensive that it took two companies — American Ballet Theatre and San Francisco Ballet — to co-produce it in 1998. Yet Ashley had no doubts. He knew what an incredible success this would be.

As a conductor at the San Francisco Ballet during the premiere, I had the unforgettable experience of conducting for the original SFB production, together with Emil de Cou (who is now Music Director for Pacific Northwest Ballet). Ashley was Associate Artistic Director at SFB at that time, and we saw how this ballet absolutely electrified audiences, both in San Francisco and on tour at the Opéra Garnier in Paris. Having practically memorized the score at that time, I mourned the end of the San Francisco production, and hoped for a chance to conduct it again someday.

It was Othello that brought me to Chicago. When Ashley boldly programmed the work for the Joffrey Ballet’s 2009-10 season, he invited me to conduct it, and thus began my association with the Joffrey. As Ashley predicted, the production was enormously successful in Chicago — so much so that it is now coming back, three seasons later.

I have conducted hundreds of ballets, and seen hundreds more. Yet if I had to choose one full-length ballet from the past generation, Othello would be the one. Here’s why.

All of the elements are original from the ground up. When Tchaikovsky wrote his score for Sleeping Beauty, he had particular choreography in mind. The music was inextricable from one choreographer’s vision, one costume design, one set design, and one lighting design. And the same goes for Elliot Goldenthal’s music for Othello. It’s a completely new score written for a completely new ballet. How many full-length ballets in the last generation can claim that distinction? I can count them on one hand. And none of them are as ingenious as Othello.

It sustains a mood for two hours. Since I’m a musician, I’ll start with the music. Elliot Goldenthal is the master of mood-setting. From his Fire Water Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio to his scores to Frida, Interview with a Vampire and Batman Forever, he has continuously discovered compelling techniques to keep us on the edge of our seats with anticipation. In Othello, the moods range from deep love and ecstatic frenzy to dread, rage and horror. He pulls us along through the drama, from beginning to end. And the great Lar Lubovitch accomplishes similar wonders, because…

The choreography is unmistakable. If you have ever seen a Lar Lubovitch dance, you know that his style is unique. The shapes that he creates with human bodies are impossible to mistake for the work of anyone else. More importantly, Lar has found a way to tell the story of Othello entirely through gesture. Yes, the dancers portray their roles with intensity and passion, but those are secondary to the moves they make. Lar has discovered a unique shape or momentary pose to communicate each hyper-specific emotion and plot point of the story. It’s not just love or anger — those would be simple enough to portray. It’s the much more complicated sentiments like “I derive erotic pleasure from the thought of ascending to the throne,” or “I submit to your brutality out of a sense of duty,” or “I am devastated by the fact that I now have to murder you.” One gesture is all it takes. And not a hint of ballet mime.

Interestingly, Lar doesn’t really consider himself a ballet choreographer. Though Othello clearly incorporates advanced ballet techniques and could never be performed by anything other than a world-class ballet company, Lar modestly calls it “A Dance in Three Acts.”

(For much more insight into the ingenuity of Lar’s vision, in his own words, please read this terrific recent interview.)

It’s a uniquely integrated work of art. Not only are the costumes, sets, projections and lighting totally in service to the story — as you would expect in any great ballet — but here, the dance is completely in service to the music, and the music in service to the dance.

There’s a reason for this: They were composed at the same time. Once Lar identified Elliot Goldenthal as the perfect composer for this project, he gave Elliot an elaborate “storyboard” to work from. From that point on, the two of them worked simultaneously. Each night Elliot composed a section of the music; and the next morning, he brought it into the studio for Lar to choreograph. If Lar needed more time for a particular dance, he asked Elliot to expand it by a few measures. If he wanted to omit a scene, cuts were made in the music. This is exactly how Peter Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa collaborated on Sleeping Beauty.

I want to point out one chillingly beautiful example of how well-integrated the elements of this ballet are. At the beginning of Act II, we see a ship come in: it’s Othello, Iago and his men returning from battle. When the ship docks, sailors quickly stretch three thick and heavy ropes all the way across the stage, securing them on the other side. At the same time, another group of three ropes appears onscreen, higher than the original group. Now picture this: While the two groups of ropes are clearly separated, the ropes within each group are tangled and twisted.

Now, if you were to express the concept of three ropes in music, you might use three long notes. And since the ropes are tangled, the notes don’t form a straight line up or down, but instead they create a twisted pattern. You might choose one long note — say F, followed by the closest possible higher note, G-flat, followed by the note that’s lower than the first, yet as close as possible, E. There you have it: three twisted ropes.

Now to describe the second, higher set of ropes in music, you might do the same thing, but higher up. Those three notes would be C, D-flat, and B.

Elliot Goldenthal’s music to Act II of Othello is completely based on these two groups of three twisted notes each: F, G-flat, E, followed by C, D-flat, B. Not only do they appear as long tones, describing the ropes themselves — but these notes are also the basis of an enormous, breathless, thousand-measure-long tarantella which makes up the entire second act.

Why would Elliot Goldenthal choose the ropes, of all things, to depict in music? As Act II progresses, this becomes clear: the ropes are a visual depiction of the story. As Othello becomes increasingly deceived by Iago, more and more tangled ropes gradually appear in the background, until they form a literal web of lies. And simultaneously, the music becomes increasingly complex, dissonant, and twisted.

It’s compelling to all audiences. When Othello first played in Chicago three and a half years ago, word spread fast. This was not your typical girls-in-tutus type of ballet. It was searing, electrifying, and sometimes brutal. People who never saw a ballet in their lives flocked to watch Othello, and I’m sure that will happen again.

Othello appeals to our modern sensibilities more than any other ballet I know. It’s an ancient story that pre-dates Shakespeare, but it’s told in a way that we can immediately identify with. Without sacrificing quality, line or technique, it takes ballet off the pedestal and brings it to the people.

If you are anywhere near Chicago, don’t miss this production. And if you get a chance, please steal a glance at the orchestra pit, where the Chicago Philharmonic and I will be having the time of our lives with a modern masterpiece. Did I mention that this is the greatest ballet of the last 30 years?

—
Scott Speck is Music Director of the Joffrey Ballet, Mobile (AL) Symphony, West Michigan Symphony and Washington Ballet, and the newly designated Artistic Director of the Chicago Philharmonic. His books Classical Music for Dummies, Opera for Dummies and Ballet for Dummies have been translated into dozens of languages and reached a worldwide audience.

Photography For Joffrey’s Season Brochure

April 3, 2013 by 4dancers

Joffrey Ballet Season Brochure Photo Shoot with Christopher Duggan from Christopher Duggan on Vimeo.

(Footage by Nel Shelby & editing by Ashli Bickford of Nel Shelby Productions)

by Christopher Duggan

When The Joffrey Ballet asked if I was willing to go to Chicago for three days to photograph their dancers for their 2013-2014 season brochure, I was thrilled. Arranging the photo shoot to fit the dancers’ schedules was so tight, there was only one week to make it work for all of us. It just so happened that was the week Hurricane Sandy was rolling into New York City.

The night before my wife Nel, daughter Gracie and I were supposed to fly to Chicago, all the flights were cancelled. There wasn’t any chance of rescheduling the shoot. So we piled our cameras in the car, quickly prepped for the 13-hour drive and hit the road before the rain. I’m so glad we did.

I brought my assistant Whitney Browne with me from NYC, because working together as a team helps get things right so much faster. We discussed ahead of time the looks we were going for in terms of lighting and backdrop, and we were able to order the equipment to get the set ready. I brought my cameras and rented everything else locally. The rental company made things super easy for us as they delivered everything right to us. And they delivered for FREE which is unheard of in NYC. That was an added bonus!

Joffrey gave me two days to work five different setups with the dancers, which was great. We scheduled three-hour time slots for each of the five performance programs, starting with Romeo & Juliet. The dancers arrived early to have hair, make-up and costumes ready for shooting. Each three-hour shoot ends up resulting in 1-3 final photographs that get used in the brochure and other marketing materials.

Ashley C. Wheater, the Artistic Director, myself, the creative team, and sometimes, the dancers all bring ideas to the table. So it’s good to have a few hours to work out different kinds of scenarios. It’s always good to leave room to improve on different poses and movements and room for spontaneity, too.

Once the photo shoot is complete, I made selections and worked on the images in a post-production process that involved some “clean up,” making sure all the images were consistent in color, contrast, exposure, etc. I played with some creative cropping on a few of the final photographs, and then I delivered them to Joffrey.

From there, The Joffrey’s creative staff go through their selection process and turn the images over to their internal graphics department to create the brochure and overall graphic design concepts. I had no part in that process, but I was pleasantly surprised to see the gorgeous layouts that they made. I was proud of what we did together.

See the full finished season brochure on my blog.

Christopher Duggan bio — Christopher Duggan, Photo by Julia Newman

Contributor Christopher Duggan is the founder and principal photographer of Christopher Duggan Photography, a New York City-based wedding and dance photography studio. Duggan has been the Festival Photographer for Jacob’s Pillow Dance since 2006. In this capacity, and as a respected New York-based dance photographer, he has worked with renowned choreographers and performers of international acclaim as well as upstarts in the city’s diverse performance scene.

He has created studio shots of Gallim Dance, Skybetter + Associates and Zvidance, among others, and in 2011 alone, he has photographed WestFest at Cunningham Studios, Dance From the Heart for Dancers Responding to Aids, The Gotham Dance Festival at The Joyce Theater, and assisted Nel Shelby Productions in filming Vail International Dance Festival.

Duggan often teams up with his talented wife and Pillow videographer Nel Shelby (http://nelshelby.com). A New York City-based husband and wife dance documentation team, they are equipped to document performances, create and edit marketing videos and choreography reels, and much more.

Christopher Duggan Photography also covers Manhattan’s finest wedding venues, the Metropolitan and Tri-State areas, and frequently travels to destination weddings. The company’s mission is straightforward and heartfelt – create timeless, memorable images of brides, grooms, their families and friends, and capture special moments of shared love, laughter and joy.

His photographs appear in The New York Times, Destination I Do, Photo District News, Boston Globe, Financial Times, Dance Magazine, Munaluchi Bridal, and Bride & Bloom, among other esteemed publications and popular wedding blogs. One of his images of Bruce Springsteen was added to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s celebrated photography collection in 2010. His company has been selected for inclusion in “The Listings” in New York Weddings magazine.

Finis: Artist Portraits in my Natural Light Studio at Jacob’s Pillow

January 31, 2013 by 4dancers

contemporary dance students — Kassandra Cruz and Alonso Guzman

by Christopher Duggan

I had been dreaming for a few seasons about making portraits of the incredible dancers, choreographers and artists that come to the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival each week. In 2012 I put it into action: the Natural Light Studio.

There is a deck right behind the Ted Shawn Theatre where dance photographer John Lindquist used to make images. I was lucky that the space was available for me to set up a simple but effective natural light soft box and backdrop.

skybetter and associates — Kile Hotchkiss

I made over 200 portraits that summer— between mainstage companies, School participants, faculty, Inside/Out artists, staff, interns, my daughter…

During the 2012 season, I was a faculty member for a dance photography workshop at the festival. The workshop was directed by dance photographer Rose Eichenbaum, and she asked all of us to describe our photography in one word. I thought a lot about it, and the word I chose was joyous. That’s my approach to all of my photography, both dance and weddings. I’m looking to have fun and see the joy inside of people. That doesn’t mean I want big cheesy smiles—I want to capture the joy created by being who you are.

joffrey ballet — Victoria Jaiani and Temur Suluashvili

I wanted every person I invited into the studio to have the space to emerge, to really be seen for who they are. In the spirit of the Pillow, in the spirit of creativity, in the spirit of collaboration, and in the spirit of making art together.

101_20120825_DougElkinsandFriends_Christopher.Duggan_054 — Doug Elkins & Friends

Other people have picked up on the fact that I always say let’s “make” pictures. I don’t “take” pictures. It’s semantics, but it’s true—when I work with dancers, choreographers, brides, friends…we “make” something together. And that’s what I felt like I achieved this summer in my Natural Light Studio. Whether dancing or more pedestrian, I was approaching the sessions in the same way, and different people brought different things to the table.

I’d say the summer was a success. And I can’t wait to expand on the project this season.

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