Ogygian
Ribbon dancers at the Greenwich Cultural Festival
(c) Carole Edrich 2010
The word for this week is Ogygian. Another word I had to look up when I first read it, I think it really sounds like what it means. I choose ribbon dancers to represent what can best be summarised as ‘primeval; of obscure antiquity’.
Chinese ribbon dances were once performed only for royalty. It is believed that they started all the way back in the Han Dynasty (206 BC to 420 AD) and that they developed further developed in the Tang Dynasty (589-907 AD). The story goes that the dance was first created to honor Hsiang Po, a man who used his sleeve to block the sword of an assassin attempting to kill the Han emperor. Performers later incorporated longer ribbons (particularly in what is known as the Golden Age of Chinese dance) and new ribbon dances evolved from that.
I don’t much like this shot which was taken on the hoof (I arrived too late to spend any time on the performance as I had other shots to take elsewhere). At the time I had it in my head that the dancers should be shown in context, which meant showing a recognisable part of Greenwich with them. Looking back the choice I made wasn’t the best place for the dancers or for the building, although it does do what I intended.