Dena Reynolds Dance studio was down the hall from my Hoboken studio in the mid-‘90s. In the pre-digital era, I often experimented with time exposures and camera movement. There were many mistakes, but I loved the unpredictability, the happy accidents. So, I asked Dena if she might be willing to spend an afternoon in my studio. She brought her energy and some “extras.” The dancers in these pictures are Cynthia Lawton Singer, Kelly Arthur & Dena Reynolds.

The above composite image is made from scans of the five B&W analog negative frames below.

In the gallery “Danse de la Vie” you’ll find these and other images from the session, including two composite outtakes.  The individual frames were shot “in camera” with a Hasselblad on Tri-x film at my former studio in Hoboken’s Monroe Center for the Arts. The lighting is a controlled mixture of flash and tungsten (one to freeze, one to paint with light).  The tungsten “painted” lighting was in the form of a handheld spotlight masterfully maneuvered by my frequent collaborator Will Landin.

I asked Dena recently to describe her dance company back then. “The focus of our work at that time was to gather our strengths as women and to see through and beyond the place we are bound in by society and culture. We believed that by supporting each other in seeing the truth we would free ourselves from the restraints and injustice women in our world have been conditioned to accept. Our dance pieces were meant to wake others both male and female to question why and generate change for us and our future place in society. One piece we performed was called “Lineage... descendance without question.” We spent many hours sharing our stories of the pain we experienced and the treatment we had endured as women. These conversations were about the day-to-day messages we received about ourselves and had become ingrained in our thinking.” – Dena Reynolds.

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