Ella Rose Muse: the story: Riverdance

Saturday, 9 June 2012

Riverdance

Weeeelll, I'm feeling very lucky at the moment after getting back yesterday after another exciting trip to Paris (more on that soon!), then being taken out (post much-needed nap) to see Prometheus; I'll be modelling for the Yerbury Fine Art Nude seminar tomorrow at Pipewell Hall, then next week working with a well known children's book author and illustrator, plus modelling for a mainstream photography magazine front cover up in Manchester (still available in Manchester on the afternoon of the 13th; get in touch if you want to work with me there!), amongst other quick shoots during the week. Sooo busy!! At some point next week I also want to start working on an online course I've applied for so will need to carve out some time for that and begin a schedule for the next 3 months (when I have to complete it by). I am also on a self-imposed writing break at the moment to get my fire back for it and make the most of the bookings I'm getting; the idea is that I will also catch up on reading lots of good books in the meantime to feed my imagination, but I'm struggling to read more than 5 pages or so of the brilliant Love in the Time of Cholera every couple of days...! And I used to read SO quickly!! I am also determined today to watch an episode of Game of Thrones. (In one of my many alternative life fantasies, I would be an actress in exactly this kind of thing - something along the lines of Merlin or King Arthur stuff; a sultry, elegant queen or fairy-like peasant with magical powers, riding my horse through forests and commanding people to fight for justice. (not that I'm actually in any way war-inclined). Yeah... Anyway...)

Good job I am really loving my job (aka accidental career) at the moment! What with the endless non-actual-modelling work to be done (updating, responding, emailing, scheduling, organising flights, buying tickets, coordinating bookings, packing, unpacking...) I'm really not sure how models who work more often than I do manage to have a life at all! Yes, our hourly modelling fees might be more than the minimum wage.... but for all the time and emotion that goes into it, I reckon we deserve it! :-)

Anyway, I wanted to show some new figure shots from the Edinburgh-based photographer Britalicus, taken during my Scottish trip last month. There will be more to show from our session, but I have already put one of these in my portfolio (and eventually I will muster the extreme patience required to update my website via my crashy-McCrash Dreamweaver, with one of these plus millions of new recent shots I want to put on the various different galleries there; it's a case of one new image per week there at the moment.... yawn...), so I wanted to blog a few.

Britalicus was such a pleasure to work with; although hiring me, he asked me at the beginning what I wanted to do for my portfolio! I told him I really loved his dynamic dark figures against the white background, an ongoing project of his, and we ended up having lots of fun with these. I also mentioned that I really wanted to do some strong nude dance work with a dancer, as that's not something I've done yet (and Britalicus has some great stuff in that style), and so there is a potential second shoot in the making for this during my second Scotland trip in August/early Sept. When Britalicus first contacted me over on Model Mayhem (that was back in 2010!!! - I am a slow mover; I finally get to Scotland in 2012. Oops!) his message was incredibly humble and polite, and he described himself as a 'relative novice' and wondered if I would consider working with him; even then it was evident that he would do well, and as I said to him recently; look how his work has blossomed now that I finally have made it over there! Amazing! I have been so impressed with his passion and output, and he's worked with some incredible models along the way. So without further ado, a first round of funky figure studies:

I don't usually seek to give images titles (I think that's the photographer's job, anyway!), but I am calling the middle one 'Riverdance'.

Walter De La Mare, 'The Listeners'

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller’s head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

’Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:—

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Natasha Khan/Bat for Lashes, 'Horse and I'

Got woken in the night,
by a mystic golden light.
My head soaked in river water.
I had been dressed in a coat of armor. They called
a horse out of the woodland.
"Take her there, through the desert shores."
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear.
You're the chosen one, there's no turning back now."

The smell of redwood giants.
The banquet for the shadows.
Horse and I, we're dancers in the dark.
Came upon the headdress.
It was gilded, dark and golden.
The children sang.
I was so afraid I took it to my head and prayed.
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."

Mark Doty, 'A Display of Mackerel'

They lie in parallel rows,

on ice, head to tail,

each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,

which divide the scales’

radiant sections

like seams of lead

in a Tiffany window.

Iridescent, watery

prismatics: think abalone,

the wildly rainbowed

mirror of a soapbubble sphere,

think sun on gasoline.

Splendor, and splendor,

and not a one in any way

distinguished from the other

—nothing about them

of individuality. Instead

they’re all exact expressions

of the one soul,

each a perfect fulfilment

of heaven’s template,

mackerel essence. As if,

after a lifetime arriving

at this enameling, the jeweler’s

made uncountable examples,

each as intricate

in its oily fabulation

as the one before

Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves

entirely in the universe

of shimmer—would you want

to be yourself only,

unduplicatable, doomed

to be lost? They’d prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants,

multitudinous. Even now

they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis.

They don’t care they’re dead

and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,

they didn’t care that they were living:

all, all for all,

the rainbowed school

and its acres of brilliant classrooms,

in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem,

even on ice, to be together, selfless,

which is the price of gleaming.

Kate Clanchy, 'Poem for a Man with No Sense of Smell'

This is simply to inform you:

that the thickest line in the kink of my hand
smells like the feel of an old school desk,
the deep carved names worn sleek with sweat;

that beneath the spray of my expensive scent
my armpits sound a bass note strong
as the boom of a palm on a kettle drum;

that the wet flush of my fear is sharp
as the taste of an iron pipe, midwinter,
on a child's hot tongue; and that sometimes,

in a breeze, the delicate hairs on the nape
of my neck, just where you might bend
your head, might hesitate and brush your lips,

hold a scent frail and precise as a fleet
of tiny origami ships, just setting out to sea.

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Saturday, 9 June 2012

Riverdance