DIVA DANCESPORT SHOWCASE 2013 Presented by Becky Simon and Susan Cole, April 14th 2013, Itasca Illinois

Hello to all dance teachers and students participating in this spectacular event. All of the performances were absolutely outstanding! You really did "bring it" to us. I am so honored to have been asked to photograph this event.

My wife and I performed three dances and were very excited to participate. We have been studying with Susan Cole and Josh Torres for almost four years. They have helped us improve greatly, and have inspired us every step of the way. Susan and Josh understand students need honesty, encouragement, and empathy for the learning process. They have communicated to us the precise elements we need to accomplish our goals for ballroom dancing.

I am an amateur photographer and I want my dance photographs to show the dancers in the best light, shapes, and movement. I always look for the passage in the dance which shows some kind of connection with partners and enough of both faces for recognition. "Stretch" and "Balance" are the main elements of ballroom dancing, and the reason it is considered a "dancesport".

In addition, I am also concerned about the basic elements and principles of design in each photograph. Composition, rhythm, movement, balance, light and dark, figure/ground versus an overall field of multiple images. Good posture, soft knees, and proper placement of the feet for the rise and fall, all form the creation of the American Smooth dances; the waltz and the foxtrot. The tango is danced without any rise. Two partners moving together in unison; the male lead and the female follow. The male creates the frame to present his beauty, the picture. They each dance "their own dance"

Dancers are truly beautiful, all dressed up in sparkles and flash, doing their very best in full out  performance, sometimes in pain, and often to exhaustion. But always enthusiastic! When you watch a dance performance, they are….    
Well, that is what we are all struggling to accomplish. We are all at different levels and abilities. The best about dance students is that we support each other in our effort to learn the difficult task of training your body to stretch and balance in ways we never thought possible.       

exhilerating, uplifting. The expression of the human body reveals much about the soul of the dancer.

Below are examples of my previous dance photos from The Windy City Open Dancesport Competition is Chicago, Ill. in 2011  

Transcribed from the video by (JHA). “VAST” segment, CBS, “60 Minutes”, October 1, 2017

 (download CBS app for free viewing).

“After 27 years in space, the Hubble Space Telescope is sending back some of its most beautiful and revealing images from across our vast universe”. Bill Whitaker Reports

These images reach back billions of light years beyond what we see with our naked eyes. Astrophysicist Amber Straughn points to an area in space just above the Big Dipper to a blank piece of sky where Hubble has stared for a very long time. This allows photons to continually collect onto the detector, revealing some 10,000 galaxies 22 years ago.

Now with upgrades and enhancements Hubble looks deeper and longer into space. Every point of light is a single galaxy within its own single universe. Hubble now reveals the size of the universe could be filled with more than 2 trillion galaxies; 10 times more than previously thought.

If a typical galaxy like ours has 1 billion stars (suns), there would be 200 sextillion stars (suns) in the visible universe (2 with 23 zeros. Equivalent to the number of grains of sand on all the beaches on earth. Most stars have planets orbiting around them.

[“It is easier to accept the message of the stars than the message of the salt desert. The stars speak of man’s insignificance in the long eternity of time; the deserts speak of his significance right now”. -Edwin Way Teale, “Autumn Across America (Dodd, Mead)]

The Hubble is a “Time Machine”. Adam Reese, (Nobel prize for work on Hubble) studies supernovae (exploding stars), explains this light travels to us from 10 billion years ago, before the existence of earth. In the last 1 billionth of 1 percent of that journey Hubble’s aperture door opened just in time to catch it.

The age of the universe is 13 billion years. The birth of stars and baby planets come from the gasses and dust from these supernovae. Stars are born inside these dust clouds. There is this “constant celestial [miraculous] regeneration”. Dying stars explode and send their content into the surrounding universe, feeding future stars and planets, and ultimately help to seed life. The iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones was literally forged inside of a star. “So we are literally made of star dust, we are viscerally made from the stars.

In 2019, the larger James Webb Telescope will launch, and will reveal images as far back as the beginning of time.

My comments: As an artist and retired educator, I want to know more; I have many questions and this is extremely exciting to learn about. These numbers are difficult to comprehend. Our desire to understand more about our world and beyond, and our ability to find the answers to improve our lives seems endless and insatiable. The existing STEM program in education does much to encourage our youth to study Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math; but let us not forget the individuals innate ability to reason, problem solve, and synthesize disparate elements. To develope a vision, an imagination, and creativity. One needs to go beyond the discovery of all these facts, and absolutes. Astronaut Leland Melvin and I believe the Arts would add STEAM to STEM. 

Ed Praczukowski, "Cosmic Place III", 1970, Acrylic on canvass 38"X 50". Image on Flickr 

https://flic.kr/p/CGzdVJ. jha

http://hubblesite.org/

Our July 10, 2017 Road Trip

                      Dubuque Arboretum and Botanical Gardens - 

                                Wikipedia en.m.wikipedia.org 

“The Arboretum is the largest in the United States staffed entirely by volunteers.”

“...include[s] what is claimed to be the largest public hosta garden in the United States (13000 plants representing over 700 varieties).” Wikipedia

This trip provided inspiration for some needed changes in our home garden (80% weeding, 10% new plants, 10% Architectural Structure upgrades and repairs)( timeline: ongoing) 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubuque_Arboretum_and_Botanical_Gardens

YUKITANGI

“YUKITANGI talked and talked to keep the wolf away,

But it talked so much it heard only itself,

not the river, not the wind, not even the wolf.

But the raven came and said, the wolf is hungry,

If you stop talking you’ll hear him…the wind too.

And when you hear the wind you’ll fly.

Then he became his nature, the eagle.

The eagle soared and it's flight said all

 it needed to say.”

A Girl Like Her

"A Girl Like Her" by Amy S. Weber, a Netflix movie is about teenage bullying and teenage suicide. It is very real and both the aggressor and the victim need help. Students, parents and teachers need to see this movie with actors in a documentary form. Relationship problems at home and at school extend to problems between cultures around the world. A public education beyond skills toward tolerance and understanding is paramount to our survival.