I became aware that actors can act (something that is not always self-evident when I had the pleasure of taking portraits of British actress (I am old fashioned) Juliet Stevenson in 1990 when she came to Vancouver to promote her film Truly Madly Deeply. I asked her to look into my lens and to express three different emotions that I would click, rapidly, one at a time.

In my longish life as a portrait photographer I have only photographed two women who bordered on the insane. They only acted the part. They were opera singers. One was Elizabeth Futral who posed for me as Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and the other was Dorothea Haley who played the part for my camera of the jilted 19^th century Australian Miss Donnithorne for Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Miss Donnithorne's Maggot. 

Both played the part to perfection to my camera.

If you have no idea who Miss Eliza Emily Donnithorne is (the opera is brand new) you might want to know that it is almost certain that she was the inspiration for Charles Dickens’ Miss Havisham in his Great Expectations.

I have been told by Haley (whom I photographed on Thursday in my little studio) that she has a most elaborate costume for the part. And another one, too, as she is also singing another jilted woman part Haydn’s Arianna a Naxos.

As my birthday on August 31 approaches I become melancholy. Today while driving our brand new Chevrolet Cruze I told Rosemary, “I have no idea how many years we had our Malibu (which gave up the ghost on December 23 2016) but if we keep this car for five years I will be 80. Will I be driving at that age if I am alive?” Rosemary chose to remain silent.

Every approaching birthday always take me back to the first ones that I remember in my Buenos Aires. We lived in a house with a very long but narrow garden. My mother would draw a donkey (to put the tail on it) and hang a piñata. My uncle Tony would come to take the photograph (which is one of the few instances where I can see my father in a photograph). Sometimes my birthday party (and I have hated cake since then) had to be postponed. August 30 is the anniversary of Santa Rosa de Lima. On her day or near it there was usually a terrific storm called “La Tormenta de Santa Rosa”

Alex - top; fifth from left with cone hat

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All those smiling children in the photographs are now gone, dead or disappeared. My birthday no longer has that relevance.

In Vancouver August 31 brings the winds of fall and our garden goes into a slow decline. The roses are far and in between.

But there is beauty in the garden in the realization that all things die but that they, and us, have a will to keep on while they and we can.

My father at top, Alex centre bottom with the smirk

In December 1995 I photographed Evelyn Hart and dance was never the same for me. Before that I was ignorant of the art form. Since then my ignorance has dissipated a tad. I have also witnesses lots of dance.  While I may not be a dance critic or have proper training I have seen enough dancers to know which are the good ones.

My appreciation for dance had an early beginning in a way in something not quite related to dance. When I was in my late teens in Mexico City I enjoyed going to watch frontón (jai-alai) at the Frontón México. There were some players of this ultra fast game who the fans called fenómenos. In Spanish it sort of means someone who has a talent that is beyond what we know of talent. Could it be the devil himself who is involved?

The same word was shouted in the bullring of Plaza México. I was a fan of  bullfighting. Any Spaniard or Mexican interested in el “arte taurino” will tell you (in spite of the fact that North Americans consider it a sport, a terribly cruel sport) that the exceptional bullfighter dances with grace while faced with danger.

Bullfighters such as Malonete were called fenómenos.

What do bullfighters and jai-alai players have to do with dancers, be they ballet, modern or other types of dancing?

I believe that you can find easily good dancers who have precise skills. But this is not enough. You have to have something that I call presence. As an example Marlon Brando in a tight T-shirt was an actor with presence.

When I watch dancers in Vancouver I look for this skill/presence. I like to look for it among the young dancers of the Arts Umbrella Dance Company. Every couple of years I take note of one or two that makes my grade (even though it is my amateur grade!).

The two you see here, Zander Constant and Katarina Nesic are dancers I have watched grow up through the years as my granddaughter Lauren, 16, has been dancing at Arts Umbrella for 8 years.

Of Nesic I can only say that she dances exquisitely with a grace that stands out above her peers. Part of her presence is the fact that she is blonde but has what must be almost jet-black eyes. If she happens to look at you it is Superman using X-rays.

Zander normally wears glasses. If you notice him in a line-up outside the Vancouver Playhouse you might suspect he is an ungainly teenager at loss. But if you see him dance, as I have through the years, and without glasses he is a Clark Kent suddenly becoming a Superman to match his friend Nesic!

The two showed up at my house on Wednesday and we sat for a bit to eat. Talking to these two (she is 18, he is 19) is very much like talking to polite, informed, enthusiastic adults.

It was not too long ago that Arts Umbrella Artistic Director, Artemis Gordon told me that the dance program of her school (that in my opinion is a dance company) cleared (some) of the streets of would be delinquents! I believe her.

By the time dance students reach that age of about 16 they have a schedule of dance that is so long and busy that they must attend one of two schools that offer a special program that clears the afternoon for dance rehearsals. One is Magee Secondary and the other is King Edward Secondary. They begin early in the morning and skip physical education. A bus takes them to Granville Island or the other location on 7^th Avenue at Quebec for the remainder of the day.

Constant and Nesic posed for me together. Then I asked Nesic (who does not need to wear any makeup) to apply makeup to Constant and particularly under the eyes.

It was so much fun to watch this and taking their photographs was easy. Why?

Because they are dancers. And they are fenómenos.

On December 24, 1964 my ship the Argentine Merchant Marine Río Aguapey docked in New Orleans. I was the only passenger and I was being sent back home to Veracruz after two years of service in the Argentine Navy.

With no family or friends (my shipboard young officer friends were all quite drunk by the evening) I decided I was going to explore Bourbon Street. I passed several noisy jazz bars playing Dixieland (not one of my favourite moments of jazz) and headed to a strip bar. I had never seen a stripper or a burlesque dancer take her clothes off.