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The Fire and the Cross is a series of art photography images of a solo ballerina created in the painterly style. The flaming red hair of the ballerina and the large iron crucifix at the Basilica de San Francisco de Assisi were the inspiration for the concept behind The Fire and the Cross. The dancer’s encounter with the crucifix evokes her feelings of ambivalence, passion, despair, and hope as she expresses her crisis of faith in her dance. The dance was improvised and performed in Habana Vieja Cuba by Alianed Moreno, a performing member of Ballet Nacional de Cuba. Jeffrey Morris captured the performance in old Havana and used several of those pictures as the raw material on which he digitally painted texture, light, shadow, and color to create the final art images included in The Fire and the Cross series. Jeffrey selected a subset of those images to print onto the large five-foot-tall canvasses that are presented at Art All Night. The installation also includes several of Jeffrey’s ballet images captured with dancers of Ballet Nacional, and the experience is further enhanced with two presentations of live ballet, a dance/interactive performance art piece, bubble wizardry, and Cuban conga beats.
In early 2019, just before the quarantine in the U.S. but after we all were growing increasingly alarmed by the spread of COVID across the globe, I went to Havana with the primary purpose of photographing dancers. But that is not really the beginning of the story. I went to Cuba a week after visiting my brother, the “healthiest sibling,” who we had just learned had a rapidly growing, inoperable brain tumor that would take his life in a few months. I flew to Cuba after already booking two more airline tickets—one to visit my brother again and the other to LA to sign a lease on an apartment (the cross-country movers I already hired really did want a destination address). And I left not knowing if my relationship with the woman I loved would or would not change my plans about moving—we were going to use the 10 days apart to think things over. To say the least, it was a time when I was unsure about life, love or what I wanted from either.
I knew I would be staying in a convent in old Havana, but I assumed it was a former convent. The nuns walking ahead of me, heads bowed and hands clasped, proved me wrong. For the most part they stayed on the other side of the building from the guests, but I crossed paths with them frequently and often heard them singing or chanting when they were in the chapel.
I am not Catholic nor particularly religious, but you could not help but feel the solemnity in the air and, just in case you forgot it, there were paintings of Christ and crucifixes everywhere to remind you—in the lobby, in the hallways, above every bed—everywhere. I was surrounded by religious symbolism in a location akin to a previous century, and barely familiar with the customs, politics, or language. My life had just been shaken up on a several fronts simultaneously, I was figuratively tripping on everything I tried to say and do, and I was literally tripping on the fractured cobblestone and broken pavement. Ok, I might be able to attribute the latter to the two or five daily doses of “Vitamin R” (rum), but it nevertheless felt as if I was on shaky ground. I mean, there was an actual, Richter-scaling, internationally reported earthquake just off the island mid-way into my stay (you can’t make this stuff up). The ground was literally shaking around me. But I was mostly unaware of either the seismic or the emotional shock waves
Even without much awareness of the undercurrents, I was enthralled by this large iron crucifix that I passed a few times each day as I walked across the Plaza de San Francisco de Assisi. The cross was framed by an arch built into the 600-year-old outer wall of the Basilica de San Francisco de Assisi. It was a stunning background that I was determined to use in a shoot. Soon, while photographing dancers with Ballet Nacional de Cuba, I spotted Alianed Moreno, a beautiful dancer with fiery red hair. In a flash, the title and the entire concept of the shoot was set: The Fire and the Cross, a photographic series capturing a dance about a crisis of faith. Alianed agreed to the shoot, and with only a few hours available in my schedule before I was to return home, she improvised a beautiful, dramatic and expressive dance for me to capture, bring home, and develop into the art images presented in the current show.
It was not until after my brother died, the quarantine changed all of our lives, my girlfriend and her child moved in and later became my incredible wife and amazing stepdaughter… it was only after that I realized that The Fire and Cross was not just an expression of a religious crisis of faith, but of my own crisis of faith in the fragility of life, health and love. With fond memories of my brother, gratitude to Alianed, and love for my wife and daughter, I am happy and proud to present The Fire and the Cross at Art All Night DC – Shaw.
In addition to the large canvases of the Fire and the Cross series, I was fortunate to be able to capture several more photographs of dancers with Ballet Nacional de Cuba. A sampling of these images are presented as gallery framed prints at the Art All Night installation.
