Dancer, choreographer and teacher, Sandrine Cassini has been our guest now for almost two weeks. She wakes up early. I make breakfast around 7:15. She leaves for the day and returns between 4 and 5. 

Today she got soaked. She told me that she has an umbrella but that she wanted to feel like someone who belongs to this city. Getting wet is part of that. She may be coming back soon to Vancouver if things work out for her. I hope she does as she has some portraits pending that I must take. Cassini has been recently in Iceland and New Zealand. She hails from Nice but she is partly Italian. For those who may be curious, she is indeed related to astronomer and mathematician Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625- 1712).

She had a terrible headache (as intelligent women statistically seem to get) so she told me she was not going to pose for portraits. But she did allow me to snap some of her legs (and those wonderful thighs of hers!). I took five photographs with my Fuji X-E1 and one Fuji FP-100C Instant Colour Film. What you see here is a scan of the print.

The psychiatric couch was an important fixture of my Robson at Granville studio for many years. It came from a retiring psychiatrist for $100 plus a $25 delivery charge. When me moved to our present Kitsilano duplex I had it re-upholstered to match the colour of our Chickering baby grand piano stool.

There is something about French-born ballerinas that is intriguing and endearing. Cassini has never lost that accent of hers. When I look at her face I feel that I am right behind Degas in the 19^th century Paris Opera Ballet. My guess is that I would have had a very large plate camera. I can dream but this snap is one I will treasure for a long time.