Dance International, Fall Issue
FROM CONTACT TO BALLET
The Photographic Journey of Chris Randle
by Kaija Pepper
His roots are in the early days of contact improvisation, the “art sport” that hit Vancouver in the 1970’s. During the eighties and nineties he continued to explore movement through a variety of modern dance companies in Vancouver and Montreal. He began working with ballet in 2000. Today, photographer Chris Randle is an accomplished and confident artist, his eye honed from all those years of working with a range of dance aesthetics.
Randle bought his first camera at the age of twenty, in 1971, while he was working on a cruise ship travelling the British Columbia coast to Alaska. “There was this scenery – with whales jumping and waterfalls crashing down. I bought it just to take pictures of all that.” He ended up building a small darkroom in the ship’s hold and for the next four years, with six months on the ship and six months off, he developed what was becoming an obsessive hobby.
Randle was soon photographing a huge variety of modern dance. His photographs of the early work of Vancouver choreographers such as Karen Jamieson and Jennifer Mascall are classics. His first ballet shoot, however, occurred as recently as 2000, during Ballet British Columbia’s dress rehearsal at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre of John Alleyne’s ensemble work, Schubert.
As he worked with different kinds of dance, Randle began to see that what they had in common were “magic moments” where the energy reaches a peak. It’s those moments “just before the movement changes into something else” that Randle likes to capture on film.
He also likes to isolate parts of the body to make closer, more abstract statements. In one photo of the Fulcrum trio, legs, feet and buttocks come together, creating a sense of flow and shape. The more recent ballet photographs often focus on legs or just hands. One is a montage of two separate views of Alberta Ballet’s Nutcracker, at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in 2000. For this, Randle put together a slow motion shot of the women’s tutus and legs, and another shot of conductor Earl Stafford, which he blurred slightly in post-production in order to get a bit of motion. Paradoxically, that computer-generated blur was added so the photo “might look a little more real.”
His first digital camera ( Nikon D1H ) was like a new toy. While film gives more detail and contrast, there are advantages to going digital. It’s economical, for one thing: a small disc can hold 150 shots, and is ready to pop into his computer after a shoot. Being able to work in Photoshop, where he can easily play with colour, focus and special effects, is also a plus.
Randle is not a romantic: “I don’t think I ever become one with the dancer – that’s not my goal in life,” he asserts. “I’m more of an outsider though I feel honoured that I can share in what they’re doing.” He’s an observer, and prefers to shoot during performance or in the dance studio, going with the atmosphere that is created by the artists, not one that is arranged by the photographer. Randle’s photos often have movement in them, and texture, or grain. “The set up shots in a [photographic] studio with 100 ASA and strobe lights don’t interest me,” he says.
He continues his association with Ballet B.C., often shooting rehearsals at their new Scotiabank Dance Centre headquarters. “It’s a wonderful place because it has natural light, it has nice floors and also white walls.” He showed me rehearsal photos where the bright overhead lights are balanced by daylight coming from the large windows at one end of the studio. It’s this kind of “found” setting that inspires him, and it’s often the quieter, non-rehearsed moments that catch his practiced eye. A dancer standing in a back corner during a company rehearsal, waiting for their scenes, is as likely to catch his notice as is the main action.
“I’m more comfortable with what I want to portray,” says Randle about his present work. “As you get older, you become more instinctive…. Back then I would just shoot like crazy and I wouldn’t know until I got the film back whether it was successful or not. Now I have a pretty good sense if a shot is successful as I take it.”
Randle recently did a photo shoot in the EDAM studio at the Western Front, where Peter Bingham, Andrew Harwood and Marc Boivin were tuning up for their annual Echo Case improvisations with musicians Coat Cooke and Ron Samworth, and lighting designer Robert Meister. The Western Front has a beautiful hardwood floor and Randle has been shooting Bingham and his company, EDAM (Experimental Dance and Music), there for decades. He entered the space quietly with his silver suitcase of photographic equipment, casually dressed in runners and shorts. The guys joke together, complain about injuries, take a look at Meister’s lighting plan. Then the three dancers begin to move about the studio, and Randle gets to work. He hunches, crouches and contorts his body. Bingham, laughing, jumps for the camera, showing off, having fun. Randle is also having fun, finding - and creating - magic moments
