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I first saw the Facing East Dance Company at the Theater Artaud street show in San Francisco this past October. On Saturday night amidst the howling wind and the pouring rain, I made the journey up north to Hearst Gym in Berkeley to seem ’em again (along with Jason Britton Dance and a few other troupes).

I had the opportunity to test a new lens at this dance performance, the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS. IS stands for Image Stabilization, and it affords the ability to take handheld shots at shutter speeds far below what one normally can take. In most cases, you can handhold at 1/lens focal length. For instance, if your focal length is 200mm, you can take a handheld shot at 1/200th sec. With the D30, you have to multiply that number by 1.6, due to the focal length multiplier factor of the camera. So, 200mm is similar to 320mm, which means you can take a handheld shot at 1/350th sec. With an image stabilized lens, however, you typical gain 2-3 stops, which equates to be able to shoot at 1/30th or 1/60th sec.!

The lens came in handy at the Facing East Dance Performance, as the light levels were low and the action was fast. I usually had my camera locked at f/2.8 and 1/125th to 1/180th second. Out of the 60 pictures that I took that night, I’ve posted 14 of them here in this photojournal.

Dancers have such graceful form; it’s a wonderful sight to see one performing at the top of her ability.

Ben looked to be much faster and more aggressive in his praying mantis form Saturday night. I suspect that in the time since his Theater Artaud performance, he’s been practicing more advance mantis forms. He was fast!

Rae, Felicia, and Doris performed a wushu-inspired dance that concluded the evening. They switched between a number of wushu forms, including eagle and mantis.

In sad news, Excite@Home shut down their cable Internet service this past weekend. With the bankruptcy in full gear, they didn’t feel like being the whipping dogs of the cable companies like AT&T. AT&T informed us that they are working on establishing their own broadband network, but that might not happen for weeks. In the meantime, then, it’s back to using dialup.