Bodies at rest in motion: pictures of dance

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by Courtney LeBauer

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Greenfield asks dancers to "leave their choreography at the door" preferring to collaborate with them in creating completely new moments. This creates the freedom and spontaneity so apparent in Greenfield's "moving still-lives" and allows her to "capture the personality of the performer."

Greenfield started out as a photojournalist in Boston in the early 1970s. But, she was soon frustrated by photojournalism's emphasis on content over all else, and she turned to dance photography, in which the form is the content.

Yet it wasn't until 1982 that Greenfield's unique technique began to develop. Oddly enough, the style that has become so distinctive was initially the result of Greenfield's inexperience at using a Hasselblad camera which she borrowed for a commercial fashion assignment.

The problem was that the image seen through the lens is reversed, so the subject moving to the right appears through the viewfinder to be moving left. The borrowed camera also had a telephoto lens that cropped the subject.

The result of this shoot was sharp pictures, but also chopped arms and legs. Greenfield was ecstatic. "Heretofore, these would be pictures that go in the garbage can ... But I started thinking of the frame as a compositional and dramatic force."

Greenfield found that the square frame of the Hasselblad completely changed the momentum of her photographs, distributing "the gravitational pull equally on all sides."

Greenfield's dancers are almost caught in mid-air, seemingly defying gravity and frozen in time. "I think there's a mystery when you don't see the moment after the moment," Greenfield says. "You're wondering how the hell he's going to land. And it looks impossible."

I would have thought it impossible to feel such a powerful energy merely from gazing at a collection of photographs if I hadn't experienced it myself. Boundless energy emanates from each work, sometimes spinning beyond the frame, at other times concentrated and centered.

Greenfield's photographs, simply displayed against the stark white walls of the Media Center, constantly test one's sense of space and time. Often the dancers seem to hover in the air against merely a plain background with no floor visible. All that remains for the observer as a reference point is the square frame of the photograph, which can't even contain the dancers within it.

The true subject of Greenfield's dance photographs isn't the dancers so crisply captured in the film, but rather the motion and almost tangible energy in which they are caught.

In several of her works, Greenfield adds to the energy of her dancers by creating motion with props -- balls hang in the air alongside bodies, dancers float at impossible angles over a staircase, swathes of tulle envelope human forms while highlighting the wavers of energy and motion.

Just as the title of the exhibition, "Breaking Bounds," suggests, there is no containing the motion and momentum Greenfield creates in her photographs -- ironically considered a form of still art.

An exhibition not to be missed, Greenfield's photographs are so much more than beautiful works of art. They are exhilarating moments of energy which can be felt through the eyes.

This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the March 18, 1994 issue.

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