Chris Bickford

I’ve recently put together a book of a performance by London’s Rambert Dance Company in Montepulciano, Italy that I shot this summer. The performance was part of Montepulciano’s summer arts festival, and ran for two nights in Piazza Grande, which holds the distinction of being the highest piazza in Tuscany. Unfortunately for the dancers, that means the nights can get quite chilly, even in summer. The company put on two flawless shows however, and we all had a fine time hanging out in the café afterwards.

The bulk of these shots are seconds apart, and come from a single piece, out of about six or so that were performed that night. As I was shooting a live performance in a public square, it was a little tricky moving around, trying to find the right angle, trying to get close enough for a good shot, without being obtrusive or annoying to the paying spectators. In the end, I think I fired off the motor drive a little too much during this piece, and my newfound Italian photographer friends ribbed me about being a machine-gunner, but I did get some cool shots…

The Rambert Dance Company is one of England’s most prestigious and preeminent modern dance groups. It was founded in 1926, and currently has 22 dancers. The Montepulciano show was a showcase of works in progress, and the dancers, as they put it, were “on holiday” there, dancing for free in order to try out some new work and enjoy a few days in a Tuscan hill town. They were, in addition to being spectacular dancers, a great bunch of people, and I hope to run into them again.

This piece has got me thinking about taking things in a certain direction. Something about what happens in performance, when individual personalities lose themselves to the dance and become beings of pure movement…Something like that…

The end of summer here is always bittersweet. There is a sense of relief, that the tourists have gone and that the traffic has slowed and that soon the suffocating heat will subside and we will still have two months of beautiful weather and warm water…but every year it hits us all with a bit of a shock. People get a little depressed, maybe even a little ill. After all the craziness of summer, it’s hard to slow down and contemplate the coming off-season. Some people will move away, or leave for the season. Some relationships will end, and new ones will begin. And we’ll all be making less money. But soon enough the momentum of autumn kicks in, the hurricanes start pumping surf and there are weddings, wine festivals, and Halloween parties look forward to. The sky gets crisp and colorful, the hoodies and Ugg boots come out, the oysters get cheap and plentiful, and we all remember why we live here.

Anyway, here are a few recent photos…

Of all the cities of the world, perhaps none is so ingrained in the collective imagination as Paris. There is something about the place that we all feel and understand, even before we set foot in its quartiers. Maybe we all read the same picture books, or saw the same movies when we were children; maybe it’s those iconic images from Renoir, Monet, and Doisneau that grace the walls of college girls’ dorm rooms around the world. Maybe it was from reading Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Henry Miller…whatever the cause, Paris is a place that has already filled our minds before we ever even arrive, and a place that we all seem to want to hold on to after we leave. “We’ll always have Paris,” “wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you”…how many artists and writers have expressed this notion,that those who have visited and loved the City of Light carry a piece of her wherever they go?

So Chris Whitehurst turned 40 last week. As befitting for the unofficial “mayor” of the Land of Lost Children, we had a big party, involving several boats and a lot of seafood and beer. Originally Whitey wanted a parade down Lindberg Street, but somehow the event morphed into a boat procession from Jon Beckner’s house to Greentail’s Restaurant on the Currituck side of the sound. At the Beckners’, we presented him with his birthday present–a Fender Deluxe Telecaster, which Gary Rader had bought with a pool of funds from the crew (Gary’s ulterior motive was to get his old blonde Tele back, which Whitey has been using for the past two years). Chris was also given a top hat and scepter, which he proudly sported the entire evening. The party ended up at Chili Pepper’s, where Whitey got up with his new guitar and tore it up with Formula.

Happy Birthday, my man…

From Zagreb we flew to Dubrovnik, where we had rented an apartment for five days. We rented scooters and tooled around the old city and the surrounding beaches. We walked the city walls and drank beer in the squares. We ate pizza and seafood, wandered the alleyways, and swam.

Dubrovnik is a city that swims, literally. Everywhere there are people hopping into the Adriatic for a quick dip, whether it’s just outside the city walls, on the outlying pebble beaches, or on the surrounding islands. Pack your trunks if you go, you’ll be wearing them all day long.

Click on any of the thumbnails below to see the full-size photo, and start the slideshow…