Saturday, September 01, 2007



In May I wrote and photographed an article for Vancouver Lifestyles Magazine, The Manly Art of Ballet that featured six young and talented maled dancers from Arts Umbrella. I chose to photograph four of them (here, clockwise from upper left, Michel Issa, Jeremiah Kennedy, Jed Difhuis and Scott Fowler). The fifth and sixth boys, Alex Burton and Conner Gnam I photographed elsewwhere with their teachers.

The unifying theme for those four boys became a page in the magazine where they all appeared with Nina Davies. After years of seeing the dancers at Arts Umbrella (where my Rebecca learns dance) I was always drawn to this young woman who has grace and poise in spades plus a flexibility that astounds. It is not surprising that at this moment Nina would like to someday perform with the Cirque de Solei!

Her mother Kitty contacted me for copies of the photographs and I met with her and Nina, over coffee, this week to give her my photographs.

As I watched and listened to them, as I admired Nina's adult behaviour (while noticing the freckles on her nose) I thought to myself, "What fun it must be to be Kitty and to have such a daughter. Could Rebecca at 15 be such a girl/woman, someday?"

As soon as I got home I called Hilary and told her of that morning's event with Kitty and Nina. "I would like Rebecca to be like Nina when she is 15." Hilary understandably answered, "Rebecca has to first be herself."

I hope anybody reading this understands what I meant.

It seems that when Rebecca was in first grade at École Bilingue, Nina was also there. Nina told me, "I used to talk to Rebecca and she would never talk about anything else except dance." I will keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.