Friday, June 5, 2015

Dancer + Racquetball Court, Santa Maria del Mar, Cuba, 2014


On a visit to my friend Eduardo at his hotel, a group was performing for the tourists in the lobby. Three dancers moved to the music created by three musicians, while some non-relevant program played above them on the television. The space for their performance was tiny, and they did their best to keep the mood pleasant.

My eyes then noticed this young woman getting ready to dance. She was wearing this same dress, so elegant. All my mind could think about was this dress against the green wall of the racquetball court near the beach.

Eduardo saw my reaction, we talked for a minute and then he walked directly over to the group's leader to present my proposal: would they be interested in heading to the beach for a recording session, as well as some photography?

They came over to look at my work, both the photographs as well as the video. Immediately we hit it off and scheduled a morning to pick up the entire group in two cars. Fast forward to that morning, they were ready as promised and we arrived at the court well before sunrise.

We set up the video camera on a tripod, and the manual camera so as to minimize the noise while they performed. The heat of the morning caught up with us quickly, and the young women found themselves struggling just to finish each number… but did so courageously.

Alejandro was in charge of the small camera, and he triggered the shutter an astounding 3,000 times in two hours. All in all we had a great morning, were blessed without a single sound for the recording, and left the group on the beach to enjoy the water for the morning.

www.halimina.org

Note: This image was made with a Hasselblad 555 ELD/180 mm combination onto Fuji Neopan Acros 100 ISO film.

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