As I was getting ready to write this post I learned the passing of a dear friend, an elder in our family, our beloved Melin agabey, a gentle soul and a kind man. I dedicate this post to his memory. RIP Melin.
After much rehearsals and tweaking, last night Festival Ballet Production of Agon & Orchis delighted the audience. Agon has world-wide recognition and rightly so for its ground breaking concept and initial performance in 1957. “Contest”, coming from Greek seems to be the element that drives Agon, but Orchis brings a new dimension to the “contest”.
The photographs of dead orchid flowers looming larger than life behind the very much alive dancers presented a different kind of contest, between life and death, stillness and movement, two-dimensional versus three-dimensional. In its power to captivate the audience’s imagination and excite their senses Orchis also entered the contest against the time-honored Agon. If you don’t see this performance you will likely regret it!
As you can imagine, I was absolutely delighted to see the dancers with their graceful movements at times echoing the shapes of the flowers and at times reflecting the imagination of the choreographer Viktor Plotnikov. The combination of great choreography, wonderful music by Sonya Belousova, and the inclusion of the haunting photographs on that huge screen created a memorable experience for all.
The following photographs are from the “dress” rehearsal on March 7, but most of the costumes [Read more...]
Thanks to many of my family and friends, my Hagia Sophia Experience publication finished at second place in the MagCloud contest. I have written about that before, but now MagCloud blog has a little write up about the winning entries and entrants. Read about it on the 
As the followers of this site probably know, I had submitted my publication “
Introductory price of $50 on 10" x 15" prints from the Orchis Collection until April 30, 2013. After that the price will go up to $100 each. 
There is now a