The overall winner (main picture) is by Jon Raffoul from the UK, and shows Lucie Apicella-Howard with the caption ‘Dance makes me feel on top of the world’. Colourful and bright, it conveys the energy and dynamic qualities of dance. Vera Stephenson, USA, wins the Luke Rittner Special Commendation with a photograph of a young dancer captioned ‘Dance makes me feel like me!’ The public choice award, which attracted 2072 votes, goes to a stunning photo by Stella Smyrnaki from Greece (‘Dance makes me feel strong’) of a pair of young dancers holding a beautiful pose in front of a mountain landscape.
The judges were Melanie Murphy (RAD Director of Marketing and Communications), Gerard Charles (RAD Artistic Director) and the Korean-American photographer and artist Dolly Brown, whose work focuses on dancers, movement and performance. She says, ‘it was wonderful to see the various ways in which the entrants chose to express their feelings about dance through the medium of photography, and to see such a huge variety of entries from all over the world, showing that dance is a universal language.’
