summation dance

Summation Dance Company – Performace at BAM Fisher

May 5, 2014 by 4dancers

by Christopher Duggan Summation Dance is a growing company that has always wanted to work with the best quality dance photos and video. This year, I did a dance promo photo shoot with Summation in a studio in Queens as a lead-up to their performances at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). Nel and I really appreciate that they’ve made the investment in dance photos and video, and it’s paid off. They have excellent video documentation and they are smart enough to see that having great representation of their work is how you get the next grant or the next gig. It’s how you sell your tickets, how you build your house. They are so dedicated, constantly thinking and developing; they’re just really good artists. Here’s Summation Dance at BAM Fisher.

Contributor Christopher Duggan is a wedding and dance photographer in New York City, the Berkshires and beyond. 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.

Christopher Duggan, Photo by Julia Newman

He photographs dancers in the studio and in performance, for promotional materials, portraits and press, and he often collaborates with his wife, Nel Shelby, and her Manhattan-based dance film and video editing company Nel Shelby Productions (nelshelby.com). Together, they have documented dance at performances from New York City to Vail International Dance Festival.

Christopher Duggan Photography also covers the finest wedding venues in the Metropolitan and Tri-State areas, in Massachusetts and the Berkshires, and frequently travels to destination weddings.

His photographs appear in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, The Knot, Destination I Do, Photo District News, Boston Globe, Financial Times, Dance Magazine, and Munaluchi Bridal, among other esteemed publications and popular dance and wedding blogs. One of his images of Bruce Springsteen was added to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and his dance photography has been exhibited at The National Museum of Dance and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.

His Natural Light Studio (http://www.christopherduggan.com/portfolio/natural-light-studio-jacobs-pillow-photography/) at Jacob’s Pillow is his most ambitious photography project to date – check out his blog to see more portraits of dance artists in his pop-up photo studio on the Pillow grounds.

Finis: Studio Shoot – Summation Dance Company

February 28, 2014 by 4dancers

by Christopher Duggan

Both Nel and I have been working with Sumi Clements and Taryn Vander Hoop for a few years helping them with most of their dance photography and filming for Summation Dance.

We’re enjoying watching them grow. They’re very motivated and smart, and they really appreciate the value of excellent quality photo and video as a smart way to move their dance company forward. Summation Dance has a show coming up at BAM in Brooklyn and we wanted to have great dance images to use for promotion. Below you’ll see some more photos from our dance studio shoot.

Christopher Duggan Photography also covers the finest wedding venues in the Metropolitan and Tri-State areas, in Massachusetts and the Berkshires, and frequently travels to destination weddings.

The Dancing Literate Project

February 21, 2014 by 4dancers

by Nel Shelby

I’m amazed by Sumi Clements and Taryn Vander Hoop of Summation Dance. I started filming for them when they first started their dance company, and I was blown away by how driven and organized they were off the bat. We continued to film and edit their dance videos together and formed a really wonderful working relationship. I really respect what they continue to put out there choreographically and in their ideas of how to present dance.

Their Dancing Literate Project features performances by multiple emerging or established artists, curated by Summation Dance. The program was made to offer insight into the choreographic process and provide space for the audience to engage with the companies firsthand through Q&As with leaders in the dance world, a mini-lecture on “What to Look For” in dance and a free performance and class for kids in local public schools.

Ben Richards and Ashli Bickford filmed their most recent installment of the Dancing Literate Project at Judson Memorial Church for Nel Shelby Productions. Take a look:

Contributor Nel Shelby, Founder and Principal of Nel Shelby Productions, is deeply dedicated to the preservation and promotion of dance through documentation of live performances, fully edited marketing reels, live-stream capture, and documentaries and films that encapsulate the essence of nonprofit organizations.

Her New York City-based video production company has grown to encompass a diverse list of dance clients including American Ballet Theater II, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Gallim Dance, Gotham Arts, Kate Weare and Company, Keigwin + Company, Monica Bill Barnes Company, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Shen Wei Dance Arts, Wendy Whelan and many more. She has filmed performances at venues throughout the greater New York area including The Joyce Theater, New York Live Arts, Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, St. Mark’s Church and Judson Church, to name a few.

For the past eight years, Nel has served as Festival Videographer for the internationally celebrated Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in the Berkshires. Each season at the Pillow, Nel’s responsibilities include documenting aspects of festival culture in addition to its 20 mainstage dance performances, filming and overseeing documentation of more than 100 free performances and events, managing two dance videography interns and an apprentice, and educating students about the technical and philosophical aspects of filming dance.

She now also serves as Resident Videographer at the Vail International Dance Festival where she spent her first summer creating five short dance documentary films about the festival in addition to documenting its events and performances. Her longer-form, half-hour documentary on Vail’s festival, The Altitude of Dance, debuted on Rocky Mountain PBS in May 2013.

This year, she is creating four short films for Wendy Whelan’s Restless Creature. In 2012, she collaborated with Adam Barruch Dance to create a short film titled “Folie a Deux,” which was selected and screened at the Dance on Camera Festival in New York City. Nel’s videos for the New Jersey Hall of Fame were shown to an audience of 2000 people, and she is currently editing a dance documentary featuring Nejla Y. Yatkin that she filmed for three-and-a-half weeks in Central America in 2010.Nel has a long personal history with movement – she has a B.A. in dance and is a certified Pilates instructor. She continues to train with world-renowned Master Teachers Romana Krysnowska and Sari Pace, original students of Joseph Pilates. In addition to her dance degree, Nel holds a B.S. in broadcast video. She often collaborates with her wonderful husband, dance photographer (and fellow 4dancers contributor) Christopher Duggan on creative projects with dancers in New York City and beyond. They live with their beautiful daughter Gracie in Manhattan.

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