When I’m up late, and I can’t sleep and my mind is spilling over with ideas I find myself messaging Jenny Miller, owner of Rhythm and Motion Dance Center, asking how we can bring my latest feels-impossible-idea to life. Most nights I’m lucky to find she’s also up and and quick to fill in the missing gaps of my idea with her own designs and costumes and dreams for her dancers. Our messages to each other are filled with half formed ideas and picture inspirations and so much encouragement to keep going Triumph over adversity, laugh at the obstacles in your way.
That type of friendship is what led to this photo series. It started out as a much smaller concept. I wanted to do a dark dance session to capture the idea that beauty can come from the darkest of times. Jenny grabbed the idea and wanted to expand upon it to include the idea of blooming in every season. It felt like the perfect project for a partnership like our and thus “Bloom in every Season” was created. We felt it was an ideal series to encourage our own creativity and capture her beautiful dancers in a way that encourages them to grow no matter what season of life they are in.
We knew Arizona ‘winter’ weather was the perfect time to create this project. Within the span of about 60 days we see fall leaves, snow on the mountain, and wildflowers blooming. I felt Papago with its red tinged rock was the perfect place to begin our series. Jenny picked out fall colored dance outfits and created stunning fall inspired floral hair pieces. Makeup was done by the talented Makenzie Wisniewski, a dancer at RMDC.
After weeks of planning it was exciting to watch part one of our series come together. I found the rocky setting of Papago Mountain to be especially poetic in light of the theme as the girls ‘bloomed’ and danced over this difficult terrain. I found encouragement and inspiration creating with this group of dancers and Jenny. It filled an otherwise dull month with joy and color and I’m so excited to see what we create next month when we head to the snow for our winter part of the series!
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