MBDA Spoofla!

Last night the Madison Belly Dance Alliance held a hafla - a belly dance party - but with a twist: The dances were spoofs, send ups of "real" dances. With the proximity to Hallowe'en, a certain element of zombie was to be expected. And zombies there were! A veritable hoard of undead dancers shimmying and losing pieces. Not every dance featured zombies. There was a pleasing variety of choices including Cleopatra (with a zombied Marc Antony), the evil queen from Snow White, and an interpretive dance from Ursula K. LeGuin's "Earthsea". I love Madison!

I had a fixed focal length lens on my camera (Nikon's sweet little 50 mm) and was confined to a single location. It is a low budget show on a low stage in a UU church with no specific lighting. To keep my shutter speed up, even at f/2.8 or 2.5, I had to use ISO 1000 or even 1250 which starts to introduce a bunch of noise. Caveats aside, I did manage to get some fun photos.



Knowing I would have noise, especially when I cropped in close, I gave up on trying to eliminate it and chose to embrace it. As is my habit with performance photos, I often alter the color palate to suit what pleases me, from over-saturated to B&W and all points in between.



I do not worry overly much about the details of technical precision when I shoot for fun. What I worry about is whether or not the photo is FUN or not. Did it capture some essence of the character? When I look at this next photograph, the first thing I think is, "I want to be whoever she is looking at!" That's when I know I captured a good image.



All in all a fun night with fun people. Madison really does have an amazing pool of talented people who want to share what they do, and often that sharing is inexpensive and a labor of love. The love shows, and that makes for a grand time. I have a couple more from the night that I want to share, but that will wait for a later post.