The Emerging Dancer

In March, I headed to a photocall ahead of the English National Ballet’s "Emerging Dancer 2013" competition final at Southbank Centre's Queen Elizabeth Hall in central London. The competition is now in it's fourth year and will pick one of six English National Ballet School graduates to become Emerging Dancer 2013.

All was going reasonably well at first until consecutive dancers took to the stage when their turn arrived, blinked as they looked around then asked for the lights to be dimmed. When I say dimmed, it was already candle-strength so any hope of freezing the action was going to involve golf ball-sized noise due to silly levels of ISO.

Due to this challenge, I chose to go the other way, dropping the shutter speed down to way below the norm, resulting in flowing patterns created as the dancers performed. After I while, noticing that sequences often started and ended with a pause, I set myself the challenge of “book-ending” a move, rather than a constant flow of swirls.

The results worked well, especially when the dancer wore strong colours that stood out against the dark curtains.

Many thanks to the English National Ballet and Southbank Centre for inviting me to attend.