Illustration Friday: Dance

Boy, it's been a long, long time since my last IF entry. When I saw that this week's theme was Dance, I just had to do it. Considering that my wife is a dancer and dance teacher/instructor, and I study and draw motion through animation, it was sort of a no-brainer. Funny how Andrea and I both study movement: she in a 3 dimensional sense, and I in a 2 dimensional sense. And I'm not alone in this. Marc Davis, one of Disney's Nine Old Men married a dancer as well.

Andrea and I both share the same sensibilities when it comes to analyzing motion and movement in general. I like to analyze how a leg might take the weight of the body when an arm goes up, and Andrea likes to analyze how that phrase of movement will feel to her body as well as look to a viewer or to herself. Repetition becomes important—we both want to get the movement pattern down right. I love having this to share with my wife. She knows that I won't fall asleep when we go to dance performances. Afterwards we'll go into a long discourse about the show and talk about how each piece did or didn't reach the audience, how it flowed, how the choreographer utilized the moving bodies on stage, how the piece sucked, how it soared, etc. There was a time when we would go to various performances with fellow Moving In The Spirit dancers and their boyfriends/spouses and afterwards engage with great debate about what we just saw. It was both exhilarating and incredibly fun. I miss that.

I love the idea of interaction between two dancers: the mixing and mingling of arms, legs, muscles, hair, fabric, etc. All entangled, fused, coming together to make a whole. With this piece, I wanted two dancers intertwined, in fluid motion. I chose poses that, if you took the two dancers apart, would look like they could stand/dance on their own. But when the two are put together, however, there's electricity. Hopefully you can sense that here.

More Illustration Friday goodness can be found here.