Breathing life through dance
By KAREN BOSSICK
The Wood River Journal ~ Hailey
For years Aubrey Stephens trained his focus on incisors, canines and molars.
But, since retiring, the Hailey dentist has trained the lens of his digital Hasselblad camera on dance-specifically, the dancers of the Wood River Valley.
Over the past seven years, he's caught the students at Footlight Dance Centre in mid-air, in the blur of a spin, in the anticipation of dance and in that moment of exhilaration when they know they've aced a performance.
Now Stephens has parlayed some of the best of his shots into a beautifully crafted 128-page hardcover coffee table book, “Breathing Life Through Dance.”
Stephens will sign copies of the book, which shows dance students in a constant state of self-discovery and self-realization against the canvas of music, from 5 to 7 p.m. Saturday at Chapter One Bookstore in Ketchum.
He is giving the net proceeds from the sale of the $49.95 book to scholarships for young dancers.
“I want people to see how important dance is,” said Stephens, whose photos emphasize the contrast of tension and release, rigidity and fluidity, movement and stillness. “The arts are being marginalized by political pressure, yet they're essential for brain development.”
Stephens' book gives readers a window onto dance from the tentative steps of 6-year-olds to polished dancers who have spent 12 and 13 years of their lives perfecting a pirouette.
And it features the thoughts of several dancers, including Jessica Humphrey and Solee Uranga.
Brianna Rego shares how she dreamt of little but dancing on pointe as she spent her first four years in casts due to surgeries to correct club feet.
McKenna Peterson writes that viewers don't see the throbbing feet and aching muscles all masked with a smile as they watch a ballerina floats across the stage.
Christina Arpp offers the idea that the status of being a dancer is not determined by how many dance classes one has taken but by the pure bliss and respect dancer finds in the body's ability to move.
And Kaley Pruitt states simply: “I don't think I have to call myself a ballerina or a modern dancer. I am simply a mover.”
Clicking on self-expression
While showcasing the creative talents of the young dancers, the book gave Stephens an opportunity for creative expression-something he says he stifled during 35 years of dentistry in Ketchikan, Alaska.
“I think he was attracted to dance because he realized how expressive it was,” said contributing photographer Manon Gaudreau, a Canadian photographer that Stephens met at a photography workshop in Hawaii.
Stephens retired in 1995, burnt out by too many years of being on call 24/7 and sickened by the increasing toll that the drug culture was taking in the Alaskan fishing village.
It was a chance visit to a fine art gallery in Seattle that introduced the Boise native to the work of photographic artist Elizabeth Opalenik, who demonstrates her own penchant for photographing movement in the book “Poetic Grace.”
Inspired by her work, he became a photography junkie, taking professional workshops at leading photography classes in Idaho, New Mexico, Montana, Maine, Colorado, Hawaii and even France. He studied with New York dance photographer Lois Greenfield and he became a student of figure study with Elizabeth Opalenik.
For the next seven years, he began shooting publicity photos for Footlite Dance Centre, capturing students' every move in a studio filled with strobe lights.
For every hour he spent taking promo shots, he took another hour experimenting with double exposures, blurring dancers' movements to show motion, backlighting dancers and putting dancers behind backdrops to get shadows.
Eventually, he had thousands of shots.
“A fellow photographer told him, ‘You have a body of work. Why don't you publish it,'” said Gaudreau.
Focusing on the brain
Stephens says the book shines a spotlight on youngsters who have found a way to channel their energy constructively and are committed to the discipline needed to succeed.
“These are kids who never make the newspaper because they're not bad and they're not quarterbacks. These kids may not become great New York City ballet dancers, but each of them represents some aspect of greatness and they will carry that greatness through life. These are the kids that will go on to become CEOs and other pillars of our society.”
Stephens is also passionate about the way music-and dancing--enhance brain activity. So much so that he's already working on a second book--a more scholarly treatise of the how dancing and other arts affect intellectual and emotional development.
“The more the brain is engaged over the years, the more lanes are added to our freeway,” he says. “Dancers have extremely developed brains and this helps develop both creativity and the scientific side. And I need to get the word out.”
If you go...
Aubrey Stephens will sign copies of his book, “Breathing Life Through Dance,” from 5 to 7 p.m. Saturday at Chapter One Bookstore in Ketchum.
Copies can be purchased from Chapter One Bookstore, from Footlight Dance Centre or by sending $49.95 plus $3 tax and $3 shipping to Box 4782, Hailey, ID. 83333.
Net proceeds from sales of the book will go towards dance scholarships.