Celebrating Maia - Maia's Dance

In May 2015 many dancers gathered to thank Maia for all she has done for the community.  I was lucky to attend and to be able to sketch the dances.  As usual, the piles of draft sketches are still on my drawing table.  But I was pleased to shove other work aside and put the finishing touches on her dance.  It was excellent, typical of her work.

 

 

Personally, I learned much from Maia, as she mentored me on our tandem 'Basket dance' as I completed the excellent Advanced Dance course from the Academy of Gorean Dance.  She has taught so many of us, amazed us with her performances (including a winning spot at Design and Dance 2013).  It is little surprise she has so many friends who wish to send some measure of thanks back in return.

Event Profile

Theme: Celebration of Maia
Location: Tarn's Point Bay
Earth Date: May 9, 2015
MC: Kyser
DJ: Domi
Organizer: Ayita
Hosted by Master Kymir and Mistress JJ
Thanks also to Nevar

There were other great dances I hope to share, as well as an intriguing group dance at the end (with 40 participants).

Photography Tips

Windows based Intel i5 CPU with 16 GB Ram, recording to a SATA drive configured as RAID 1 (redundant backup, but slower).   Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series with 1 MB of dedicated video RAM.  Captured using Fraps at 1/2 size and 30 frames per second, edited in Camtasia.  Though I have a 3d mouse, I used a normal mouse to pan. 

Filmed in Firestorm using medium graphics settings (for performance) but with 37 non imposter avatars (to see you all better).  I used 'Sunset' for my lighting settings because the angle of light was best for the orientation of the dancers.  I included my usual erratic panning, but a nicer selection of camera angles (low, top down, shoulder cam).  I cleverly concealed my camera panning disasters by adding artful stills during editing (about 5 hours for 8 minutes!).  Note that hair can be tricky to film as some have transparencies, and if there is another transparency behind it, then it will look funky (and not in a good way).  This becomes the job of the videographer - notice hazards, and quickly adapt your shots to avoid them.   What other hazards do you notice me side stepping?

Dance with fire!...Koardan of Port Haifa Academy, and supporter of the School of Gorean Dance