Dark sorcery

From the beginning, it was a challenging project for two very different personalities.

But a unique testament to the power of the creative spirit emerged from potential failure. CHRIS MOORE talks to photographer John Savage about his rewarding collaboration with choreographer Douglas Wright.

Two artists. Two very different arts. Two projects - and for photographer John Savage two challenges.

Three years ago, a proposal to photograph the evolution of a new contemporary dance-theatre work created by pre-eminent New Zealand choreographer Douglas Wright, from the first rehearsals to the first performance, was irresistible. But as the Auckland-based documentary photographer soon became aware, there were hurdles to overcome.

"Firstly, I didn't know Douglas. Secondly, I had never photographed dance before. I suspected that Douglas might be sensitive about a photographer's presence during the evolution of the work. The fact that people might change their behaviour and the creative process might also change might have been a problem," he remembers. Savage's previous assignments had included the Elvis culture in Long Live The King and Cowboy Dreams, a series about the New Zealand rodeo circuit. But this was something totally new.

Wright, a man with a reputation for prickly perfection and an obsessive eye for detail, also had reservations about the proposal to record his new work on film. He admits that he was "wary" of Savage being given unimpeded access to virtually every moment of the project.

What might have been a difficult, potentially doomed partnership emerged as the story of how a close working relationship was created between two very different personalities who came to respect each other's art.

The tangible evidence of this emerged late last year with the release of a book. Black Milk fuses Savage's photographs with a text by Douglas Wright and Leonard Wilcox in an exploration of the creative spirit which underpinned this darkly complex, multi-layered and theatrical work.

Black Milk was also a profoundly personal creation for a choreographer who once commented that he would not accept anything which did not personally haunt him. Black Milk wasn't simply another production. For Douglas Wright, it was an integral part of his life.

"After meeting John and taking his metaphysical temperature, I was satisfied that he wouldn't distort our vulnerable process by his presence," he says.

That done, and once his initial apprehension had evaporated, Savage began to relax.

"After the first couple of days of shooting, I began to feel that I could do this. Then Douglas asked whether he could see the photographs I'd taken so far. I was very apprehensive about that but much to my relief - and I suspect his - he liked what he saw," he remembers.

Wright also remembers his surprise to discover aspects of the work in the images "which I'd only glimpsed out of the corner of my omnivorous eye".

"As John produced more images it became apparent that he has the gift of an imagination that could make, out of our making, a separate work; something more than a commentary. It's commonplace to refer to dance as fleeting, time-bound - even video and moving film routinely fail to capture the essence of dance-theatre, a problem akin to trying to drown a fish or teach a butterfly to swim."

The ice having been broken, photographer, choreographer and dancers cemented their working relationship.

"It was a matter of fitting into the background. Once he had seen the work, he virtually gave me permission to do anything, go anywhere. I chose not to get out into the dance floor and move amongst the dancers. I felt that, however subtly, would change what they were doing," Savage says.

"In some ways it's easier to photograph something like dance if you keep it really simple. There's a lot happening; a lot of movement around you. I stayed in the background, standing right back and shooting from a distance. It's the way that I photograph documentary work and it seemed to succeed in this instance. Because I hadn't photographed dance before, I had no pre-conceptions about the 'look' of an art which involved a looser structure than classical ballet. It wasn't a situation where I could pre-determine what would happen in order to take a certain shot at a certain time. It was a matter of photographing intuitively."

While different photographers have different techniques to trap the fluidity and flow of movement, Savage chose not to use a flash ("for obvious reasons") choosing instead to use a very low shutter speed to allow the images of the dancers' bodies to flow across the page.

"Early in the project, I had decided that there was no way that I could get sharp images. I went in the opposite direction."

He also chose to photograph almost the whole process with a digital camera. At the end of every day, he would complete a "little" editing. When the time came to compile the book, he worked with Wright to make the final selection of images taken from the first day in the rehearsal room. After editing down to several hundred images, the two men constructed the book's final structure.

"Douglas asked to see every single image that I'd taken throughout the project, many I had not seen since my initial edit. I'm glad that we did this because we discovered photographs that I had either missed or dismissed. A photographer tends to focus on something which is either technically correct or the composition that you wanted in your mind. Douglas looked at things from a different perspective, often getting excited about the 'feel' of the work."

Wright believes that the images convey the "innards" of Black Milk in a way that he could not have imagined.

"On my initial and repeated viewings of the images I felt a shiver of recognition and acceptance as if I'd walked through the mirror and found it warm. For the only time in my experience with photography, someone had managed to capture the breathless sorcery of live dance-theatre without pulling its wings off."

Three months after the book became reality, Savage is satisfied - and proud - of the outcome of his collaboration with Wright and his dancers. "When there is a certain edge to things, it somehow makes the job easier. Photography is the most democratic of the arts. It's not just a matter of pressing a button. There is always the challenge of trying to do things differently or having a different attitude to the job. Perhaps you could describe it as a deeper insight into what is going on, and trying to communicate this."

* Black Milk (photographs by John Savage, text by Douglas Wright and Leonard Wilcox). Craig Potton Publishing. Hardback. $49.99

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