THE MUSES (PT. 1)

I’ve spent almost 40 years looking through the lens at friends from those formative years of adolescence. A couple of them were my earliest muses, before I learned what that word meant. As fate would have it, they would be my muses long into my life, further into our futures than I could ever have imagined when I was in high school. In adult life, to find a new muse is a great gift. There’s friendship—& then there’s friendship deepened by creative collaboration, when “hanging out” really means a suitcase full of wardrobe, a lighting set up, chasing the golden hour, doing make up to a mix tape, & then a sleepover. There are subjects—& then there are muses.

ERIKA

Erika in Fifth, Shilin, Taiwan, 1988

Erika & I met at Taipei American School, when she was in eighth grade, & I was in ninth. Her family (an Irish-Catholic father from Vermont and a French-Moroccan mother from Israel), had spent some time in Hong Kong & relocated to Taiwan. Erika & I forged a friendship in dance & theatre—the kind of bond that I realize now is the strongest for me. Perhaps because it comes with shared values in hard work, discipline, and creativity. Perhaps because it meant that we saw each other for hours after school almost everyday & demonstrated those values in each other’s presence regularly—& when we weren’t feeling like it, we’d see the other doing it.

My love for photographing dancers started with Erika & our love for ballet. In the 1980’s there was a very famous Harvey Edwards image of a dancer’s legs in torn burgundy leg warmers. One of my favorite photos I took of Erika was of her in a tight fifth position, my version of the Edwards image. Erika & I would go use the aerobics studio at the expat-frequented American Club in China in Shilin. We’d put on Duran Duran, do our jazz warm up and stretch or put on our pointe shoes & practice. One time, I brought my dad’s Canon AE-1, & we did a little photo shoot.

Our school had a darkroom, & I spent every free period & extra minute in it that I could. Inside, it was always quiet & cool, & I was often the only one in the red darkness. Mr. Bublitz, the photography & humanities teacher, nurtured my interest & allowed me free rein to develop as much film & print as many images as I wanted. You can see in the digitized scan of “Erika in Fifth” that there is a hair-thin white vertical line that shows where I probably pulled the negative against something during the process & scraped off the emulsion.

I was lucky early in my photography career to have friends like Erika who I could photograph. Performers are a joy to shoot. They readily inhabit different personalities, their facial expressions & body language changing with each persona. Dancers have superhuman proprioception, & they take direction beautifully, moving intuitively through space, understanding planes & relationship to an audience—arms, legs, necks, and fingers moving in tiny increments & at angles with subtlety & nuance. I think I’ve been spoiled working with them starting so early in my life.

In our current incarnations, Erika & I still support each other almost daily in our creative endeavors in writing, in motherhood, in middle age. We both now have four decades of life & experience behind us, & it has enriched our friendship in ways we could not have imagined when we were teens.

CRISTY

Cristy in Arabesque, Idyllwild School of Music & the Arts, Idyllwild, CA, 1986

Silk & Wood, Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts, Idyllwild, CA 1986

Cristy & I met in dance camp at Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts (now Idyllwild Arts), up in the mountains above Palm Springs, CA in the summer of 1986. She was ten, & I was 15, & we were both in the intermediate/advanced group. I remember just instantly liking Cristy. She had an easy laugh & was a brilliant dancer. Her positivity has always radiated outward to everyone & in every situation.

We would always stand next to each other at the barre, which was made of metal pipe segments that went all the way around an outdoor dance platform made of 4x8 pieces of plywood nailed together & suspended above the forest floor. Above us was the giant parachute that shaded us from the sun. Idyllwild is a very special place with a very artsy vibe, kind of like what you’d feel in Ojai or Sedona. It’s secluded and full of tall pines and peaks, always smelling of piñon in the heat of July and August. Student artists of all kinds would gather here for summer sessions—dancing, acting, playing their musical instruments.

Cristy would go on to become a year-round boarding student there, pursuing dance seriously, dancing with Bella Lewitsky, and then moving onto LMU. We lost touch as I went to college a few years before her, & then, by a stroke of enormous fate, I found her again—on Broadway! My husband & I were in New York City for a family wedding; our parents had never met each other, so we arranged a meeting there, which was as close as my parents in Taiwan & his parents in Maine were ever going to intersect. Both our families love musicals, so we went to see Wicked together. Sitting in the audience, I open the Playbill before the curtain rose, & who do I see in it but Cristy Candler?! I was awestruck. I searched for her in the ensemble, wondering if I would recognize her in costume. And lo & behold, I could tell immediately which one was her, because a dancer friend never forgets how her ballet buddy moves—even when she’s dressed as a flying monkey!

After the show, I beelined for the stage door, pushing past patrons leaving their seats. When I got there, the doorman told me she had already left. But he asked me if I wanted to write a note, & I could try putting it on the bulletin board to see if she’d get it. I scribbled on a piece of paper from my bag, “Cristy!! It’s Alice Kuo from Idyllwild!! I’m in NYC for the next two days. If you get this, call me!” It was the early 2000’s, and I had a cell phone, but there was no Facebook yet, no social media. It was back when you were used to waiting & wondering if you could find people. I crossed my fingers & hoped!

Cristy called me the next day after the Sunday matinee, when she had arrived at the theatre & saw my note.

And for the last 24 years, we’ve been part of each other’s lives again, in so many wonderful ways—especially as creative collaborators & supporters of each other.

Find out about Cristy’s Triple Threat Masterclasses, one-on-one coaching, and her projects at www.cristycandler.com.