Petricore Movement is a dance company founded by Anna Holmström in 2015. They are working on a new production, and I met up with them at Balletakademin in Stockholm where they have their summer residence. Anna is choreographing the production, which includes the dancers Tilda Kristiansson,Wanda Berntsson, Lydia Gelang and Elin Eriksson.
I bought a smoke machine (HQ Power Smokem 400, 600 W) at Kjell & Company a month or two ago, and it has been sitting there unused in my apartment. Finally there was a chance to try it out. We had an hour in the big room on the ground floor where we could try it out.
After a few minutes of warmup the smoke machine was ready to produce smoke. One thing to note was that the smoke rose upwards, there was also a draft in the room that made the entire cloud drift sideways. So we had to be quick once we had applied the smoke. Also, the machine did not want to keep running continuously, presumably because it needed to reheat. But given the amount of smoke it generated, that was not a big problem. The room had spotlights, but since we did not have access to the light control board we had two LED lamps with us which we used to backlight the dancers with.
After shooting in the big stage room we headed up to the dance studio. This room has windows on one side, and on the opposite side mirrors which you could pull a white curtain in front of. There was also a French window along one of the short walls next to the mirrors, which made for a great photo spot. We could get both good light, and by pulling the curtains a clean background. The grand piano in the room made a great little prop.
It was a great way to spend a morning, lots of fun. A big thank you to Anna, Tilda, Wanda, Elin and Lydia!
— Johannes
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