A Break-Dancer's Left Feet
By A M
28 Sep 2007
Defying gravity is a must for a break-dancer. Gravity push you down, but you have to stay up. People just don't want to look at you laying on the floor. And they just don't want to see you walking and dancing in a standard way. They want to see the blur, the spin, they want to see the music. Lights can help, and your mood can help too, but nothing can help you against gravity. And gravity is part of the game: it gives you speed, it pushes and pulls you.
The photos of this story are the very first pictures I uploaded on JPGmag, in June, after I went to the «Music Fest» in my town Aosta, Italy. It's a series about a break-dancer that impressed me very much because of his speed and mood.
I found myself on the side of the stage, and there was so many people that I couldn't walk any more. I had a 85mm lens on my camera, but I was too close to the stage to take photos of the scene. The problem is that I couldn't even change my lens, because I couldn't reach the bag I left on the stage.
So I decided to change this problem into an opportunity: I had to find a new way to look at someone break-dancing. I decided to focus my attention on the left feet of the dancer, following it in its evolutions, trying to find out a few shoot that, put together, could give the sense of the scene.
I had a lot of fun during this practice, and you can't imagine how fast a break-dancer is able to move his left feet! In the end, I think that in four shoots I was able to tell the story of a break-dancer's feet during its show.
When the boy ended his performance and walked away, I was finally able to shoot his back, too. Not always fair to shoot in the back, but in that situation I think it was.
More Feature Stories
More stories by A M
4 "On Stage" submissions
Personal Post — 28 Jun 2008
I submitted 3 stories and a photo to this theme, thanks for having a look
