There is a new weekly CI jam in Warsaw on Saturdays. It’s held at the well-appointed Terminal Kultury in Warsaw’s out-of-the-way Gocław district, and it’s free of charge, because the volunteers who got together to make this happen have managed to really make it happen. The community center dance space is funded by the city and we are the benefactors. Every Saturday there is an optional intro skills class from 18:30 to 20:00 led by one of the volunteers. The two-hour jam starts at eight.
So that’s the news on the new jam in town. And here’s the story of the photo.
I had my camera on me that night but I took only a few photos during the jam, of a duet looking cool and of someone taking pictures with a camera bigger than mine. Mainly, I danced hesitatntly and watched patiently, with the highlight of my evening a slow movement exploration with Ewelina, which felt like a bodywork exchange, had the expressiveness of a dance, and brought me into a state of quiet, observant presence. I left early, walked out into the warm night and onto the pavement of one truly spectacular parking lot. My intention was to get in the car and drive home.
As I walked toward my spot the yin in my body got a jolt from the yang of the crush I’ve had all year on my sporty new car (a Mazda 3 hatchback with tinted windows and giant beautiful rims in a shade of cloud-grey called Ceramic). Soon I was remembering the freedom that came with owning a car at twenty in late 1990s America, and I may as well have been standing under the sodium lights of memory itself.
If it hadn’t been for that air scented with late spring blossoms of something that also blooms in California I might never have lingered long enough to look around, might never have felt the impulse to try documenting that striking neon sign against that reluctantly darkening pre-solstice sky. And it wasn’t until I was already framing my shot that I noticed the glimpses of the dance space in the windows below. Not only was I documenting the sign, I was documenting the sign along with subtle evidence of the jam. I liked that seated silhouette in the window on the right, hoped for a metonymy of CI to appear in the window on the left, had patience to spare.
By now the whole experience had a glow to it, I felt high on luck, knew I had my shot as soon as I had it. No, Ewelina with her hand raised wasn’t the duet I had in mind, but my mind was open, Ewelina had been my duet of the night, and now she was improbably recognizable in this many-layered photo, and in enough of an expressive pose to telegraph dance as requested by my inner editor.
Just two days earlier I had begun a new ritual, of writing down, before bed, the most unexpected and interesting events of my day. Synchronicities, many would call them. This was one and so of course I made a note about it after I got home, but this was still a few days before the group organizing the jam would ask me if they could use the photo as the promo poster.
Right place, right time—I’m starting to see it as a matter of luck made possible only if you linger long enough to look around.
And here are the photos from earlier, of Kasia balancing on the small of Krzysztof’s back, and of Ania behind the lens.