Mercy was a belly dancer, and a good one. I met her at the Renaissance faire, where she danced as part of the Ujam belly dance troupe at the Irwindale Renaissance Pleasure Faire. We were never close, but over the years our paths crossed again and again, and through my camera I got to know her the way a photographer knows a subject he keeps coming back to. When I heard she’d passed away, I was sad.
She was a familiar, friendly face in a world I spent a lot of time photographing, and the faires and events feel a little emptier knowing she won’t be at the next one.
How we met
I met Mercy at the Irwindale Renaissance Pleasure Faire, where she performed with the Ujam belly dance troupe. She was a dancer through and through, full of energy every time she stepped out to perform, and she was good at it. Cute and quick to smile, she carried a kind of brightness that made her easy to photograph and easy to remember.
I never talked to her all that much in the ordinary sense, but as a photographer I had plenty of reasons to be around her. I photographed her at the faire and at events all over town. Beyond Oojahm, she danced at all sorts of public events at restaurants, hookah bars, and venues scattered across Riverside, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, and everywhere in between. Wherever there was dancing to be done, Mercy seemed to turn up, and so did I with my camera.
In one way, she was a little shy. As far as I can remember, she never approached anyone first. But the moment you approached her, she was more than happy to talk, warm and social and easy to be around. She just didn’t lead with it. Once the ice was broken, though, she was good company every time.
The Wiccan wedding
One of the more memorable experiences I’d through that crowd started with Mercy.
At one of the Renaissance faires, I got invited to photograph a wedding. It was one of the first weddings I ever shot, back when I was still figuring out whether wedding photography was for me. I ended up doing about half a dozen of them before deciding it wasn’t, mostly because everyone tends to be wound tight at a wedding and the pressure to capture the one perfect shot takes the fun out of it. But this one was different.
It was a friend of hers, and I’m afraid the names are long gone from my memory. I went to the house, and it turned out to be a pagan wedding, specifically Wiccan, and unlike anything I’d photographed before. The bride had a stone altar set up in the back with eight points and a little statue on each one, and the couple was married in the center of it.
Their arms were wrapped together in vines, and the ceremony spoke of being bound together for eternity in language and ritual completely different from the Christian weddings I was used to.
I found it all interesting. There was no pressure on me at all. That was a relief after the usual wedding tension. They paid me a hundred and fifty bucks, which is chump change for a wedding, but I didn’t mind in the slightest. I was there for the experience of seeing another religion’s wedding rituals up close, and it was worth far more than the fee.
The reception was its own event. The bride turned out to be a singer, and a lot of the wedding party were musicians, so they had a band made up of their own people singing and carrying on. There was a real music-industry vibe to the crowd, though a fringe corner of it, with a Middle Eastern flavor running through everything. They projected images onto sheets hung around the place.
It was all new to me and all interesting, even if the party itself was a little much for someone as introverted as I am. When it wound down, I headed home, having had a great time.
Dancing in the dark
Another night that stuck with me was an event at Rancho Kabob, a restaurant in Redlands.
There were several dancers on the bill, and Mercy had her own set. The room was very dark. That made the photography a real challenge, and a lot of the pictures came out dark to match. I shot video that night too, one of the very first times I combined video with photography at an event.
Considering how little light there was and that I wasn’t using flash, the pictures turned out okay in the end, and Mercy liked them. That was what mattered.
That night kicked off a whole trend for me. I started going to these tiny events where half a dozen dancers would perform in a bar, a hall, or a dance studio, and Mercy was often among them. It became a regular part of how I spent my time, and she was a regular part of it.
Eventually I produced and sponsored my own belly dance show, called Belly Dance Kaleidoscope.
Once a month I’d bring in a dozen or so different dancers and dance groups to perform, and I ran it for about a year. Mercy was one of the dancers I invited back several times, and she always came. That was Mercy. Always dancing, always having fun, always with a smile on her face.
The same friends, the same smile
What I remember best about Mercy, beyond the dancing, is how consistent she was. I’d run into her at the faires and at events, and she was almost always with the same group of friends. They were a tight little crew, and she belonged to it completely. She wasn’t someone I knew deeply, but she was someone I knew reliably, a familiar face I could count on seeing and talking to and photographing wherever the dancing took us both.
To me, she was always good. We weren’t close, but she was kind, easy to be around, and nice every single time our paths crossed. In a scene full of personalities, she was one of the steady, pleasant constants, and that counts for a lot.
Rest in peace
A few years ago I found out that Mercy had passed away, from leukemia as I understand it. The news made me sad in the way that losing a familiar face always does, even when you weren’t close. I liked her. She was a very nice woman who was always good to me, always smiling, always bringing energy to whatever stage or floor she was dancing on.
I have hundreds of frames of Mercy in motion, caught mid-dance with that smile on her face, and I’m grateful I do. That’s the version of her I’ll keep. Rest in peace, Mercy. Thank you for all the dances, and for always being happy to see me show up with my camera.
