Showing posts with label dancing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dancing. Show all posts

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Performathon

kw: music, dancing, photographs

Saturday was Performathon day, a fundraiser for Darlington Arts Center in Boothwyn, PA. I teach guitar there one evening a week. One of my students performed, as did I. However, I don't have permission to use his picture, so I've shown a couple of others.

The day opened with performances by the Darlington Dance Troupe. As you can see, they like parasols. There were several individual performances, then a couple of group numbers.

These pictures were taken by available light: this one is f/10, 1/40 sec, ISO 800. I've boosted the gamma here, as the original was quite dark. I could have used f/5, but needed the depth of field.

A fellow faculty member, a professional photographer on the side, traded lenses with me for part of the day. The second picture is with his lens. Mine goes only to f/5 at the focal length used, but with his lens, I shot it at f/3.5, 1/60 sec, ISO 800. No gamma adjustment needed.

These girls, sisters, were the hit of the show, playing a few piano duets. I am glad I played earlier and didn't have to follow them!

There had been a plan to do sidewalk painting outside, but constant rain squashed that idea. There was a communal mural painting in the afternoon, and more musical performances.

A staff member told me the Performathon is quite a lot of work for them, but she thought it better than the usual boring Saturday.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Dancing with the Woz

kw: observations, popular culture, dancing

A couple years ago our old 19-inch TV died. Warned of the impending digital switchover (we use an antenna, only), we got a set that can tune in anything, analog or digital. I think it has four kinds of tuners in it. It is not that much bigger at 26 inches, but it does excellent HD at 1080i. I guess I could have predicted that, once we could watch better-looking TV we would watch more.

Last evening my wife just had to see Shawn Johnson dance (with partner Mark Ballas) on Dancing with the Stars, so we watched the second half. An unexpected treat was seeing Steve Wozniak dance, shown here with partner Karina Smirnoff. They did the Cha-Cha. I didn't realize that the Cha-Cha is considered a ballroom dance, or that it's done with a partner!

The Woz did a creditable job, though he got the lowest score of the night. It was amusing to see his banter with the judges; nobody else said nearly as much. I suspect his popularity will push him onward for another round or two, but I'm rooting for Shawn to win it all.