Flash Dance

Cathy Vanover is not a dancer. "I've got two left feet," she said. But the North Lake College student and mother of two boys does have great timing, particularly when it comes to snapping pictures of dancers at just the right moment.

For the past four years, Vanover has been studying technique and learning the correct body lines of a dancer, and it has paid off well. Just recently, 34 of her color photographs were published in a book entitled The Nutcracker Backstage.

“I shot 5,000 images and sent her (the author) 100 of my best shots,” said Vanover, whose 10-year-old son, Grayson, has played the character of Fritz for the past four years in the Ballet Ensemble of Texas’ The Nutcracker.

Most of the photographs that were chosen were captured last year during seven Ensemble performances of the popular dance classic in Irving and Coppell. A total of 98 photographs are featured in the book, which is actually a backstage perspective of the popular classic. Vanover’s shots contributed to one-third of all images used.

Vanover has been a resident of Coppell for 13 years and is a member of the Dallas Professional Photography Association. When she’s not attending classes or Phi Theta Kappa meetings, she is busy working behind the lens with clients of her portrait business. Cathy Vanover Photography specializes in children’s, senior (high school) and family photography, and has been in business for four years.

On one hand, her subjects are calm and motionless when they pose for their portraits. On the other, they are moving fast across a stage. You’d think that she would prefer the calm ones, but she doesn’t.

“I love the anonymity of dance,” she explained. “No one is over your shoulder telling you what to do, and if they don’t like what they see, they don’t have to buy anything.”

But the challenge for Vanover is getting the right shot at exactly the right time, capturing the perfection of a dancer‘s body while it’s in motion.

“It’s an intuitive ability,” she said. “Luck, I guess. I don’t know how I do it. Sometimes I think it’s by the grace of God.”

Chuck Bryant, who was Vanover’s photography teacher at North Lake in 1997, remembers her as an enthusiastic student who was always curious and dedicated to her craft.

“She spent a lot of time in the darkroom and kept me on my toes asking questions about photography,” Bryant said.

All that darkroom time and questions have qualified Vanover as a professional photographer, and she says Bryant is the “greatest photography teacher ever.”

But photography is not her only career path. She’s a history major with her sights set on teaching.

“And I would love to teach at North Lake someday,” she said, “if Ms. Rike will ever retire. “I just love it here.”