Collaboration with Jacob Jonas the Company
Written photo caption from Instagram.com:
“I think as a choreographer my work tends to be very physical and explosive and athletic, and I encourage that in the still photographs too,” explains Jacob Jonas, artistic director of his self-named dance company (instagram.com/jacobjonasthecompany). Jacob discovered dance as a teenager living in Los Angeles; while skateboarding along Venice Beach he ran into a group of street performers and was immediately hooked. “With dance I’ve always been inspired by the people doing it rather than the moves they are doing, and that’s carried through my work today as a choreographer,” he says. A self-taught photographer, Jacob collaborates with Instagrammers to capture his dancers while on tour or outside of the rehearsal studio. He runs a monthly InstaMeet on location, #camerasanddancers, choosing unusual settings which respond to his dancers’ acrobatic movements. “I try to take each photo and make it an autobiography for the dancer — looking at the photograph you can understand who they are as people. It’s less about being flashy in their face and more about the rawness of the shot,” he says. Jacob is an advocate of staying curious and trying something new: “Encourage your friends to just go jump or do a dance pose,” he says. “You don’t have to be a professional dancer to shoot dance.”
For more dance photography from Jacob, check out the Instagram blog: blog.instagram.com/…/1341291513…/151128-jacobjonasthecompany
Photo of Jacob Jonas The Company by Daniel Deitch Photographer