Capturing the Emotion Within Tango Dancers

Here in Armenia I have grown to know a few very passionate Tango dancers. They hold weekly meetings with their friends and whoever wants to join in random cafes and restaurants throughout the old city of Yerevan. Sometimes these locations are incredibly beautiful, old and small, with minimal lighting. Really setting the stage for a beautiful atmosphere. Sometimes they unfold in more regular environments: well-lit and spacious. For them, the location doesn't matter. All that matters is that some business in the city supports their initiative and allows them to dance there. I have had the luxury of being able to photograph them a few times now, though sometimes that aforementioned environment just isn't all that suitable for capturing the raw essence of it all. Yesterday night, for the first time, it was almost perfect. Bright, full of life. And with some nice lighting to really add some background depth via the bokeh. Shot mostly on an 85mm focal length and wide open at F1.8.

I always love shooting things like this because the emotion and gesture is all in the subject. Like having actors and actual performers performing right for you to capture, to take note of those special little moments. With dancers, sometimes it's the way they position their hands, or their feet. Sometimes it's directly in the face where they really display the emotion and concentration felt from trying to move with the music. And that style changes with each song that comes and goes. I wasn't there for a long time, I had previously met with one of the frequent attenders to discuss something unrelated, to which at the end he quickly invited me in to just say hello to everyone; many familiar faces that I remembered from a year ago, as well as few others I didn't. Sometimes people come up to me in these events and start talking to me, seeing I have a camera. Often trying to talk to me in Russian. I exchange some info and that's that.


For me this is some fun practice to check out different things, whether it's something in the editing side or more in the way I shoot things, trying to take note of something that might stand out and push the image the extra mile. Previously I would use the 35mm lens for these shoots, though here I pulled out the Helios, and then switched to the 85mm lens. The 85mm I knew would be too tight to capture full bodies unless at a specific distance in portrait, but I was more going for the hands and the faces beyond anything else. This also meant that I didn't need to be so close to the dancers, which is something that's very difficult given how expressive the moments can be sometimes. Constantly having to weave in and out of people and ensuring you're not disrupting their dancing. The 35mm focal length also being nice for getting some of that environment in the frame, but not giving the viewer a more direct perspective on everything else.

Sometimes it's not even about capturing their faces and hands at all, but instead experimenting and trying to find other ways to display the emotion of the dancing. Sometimes with more observing you see it in the body language, the way their feet move, the swaying of fabric with those sudden changes in movement and direction. I originally wanted to shoot more on the Helios here, but I wanted to experiment with the 85mm a bit more, it's a lens I don't think I use enough, because that Helios really just consumes my attention due to that oval bokeh it produces, a more magical perspective on such environments, and more modern lenses with their sharpness and lack of unique bokeh just don't speak to me as much, especially from the more filmmaker side of me.

Anyway, these were just from about 20 minutes in the restaurant, snapping a few photographs after several shots of whiskey followed up by two strong cups of black coffee. Just before midnight! I certainly crashed the moment I got home, but this was a ton of fun, something I look forward to getting back into.