I have already written in GT the story of The Dancer who appears on the wall-mountain opposite Etseri; how the locals used to believe he controlled their coming year’s good or bad fate by the way of his melting. The young men would actually go and attack him with shovels, leaving only his longer, outstretched leg, pointing to our village: an attempt to wrest this good fate back each year. In my story, he is alive, and roughly, woundingly warns them not to play with forces beyond their understanding, rolling down on them in a mini-avalanche. In one ending, they persist and die, heedless of the rebuke; in the other, their leader turns away and persuades his compatriots to do the same, saving them.
This year, I have taken perhaps the best, most comprehensive set of photos ever of one season of The Dancer’s emergence from the surrounding snow, heyday in full form, and eventual melt into nothing. From July 11 through early August, I tried to shoot every day one vertical distant shot of The Dancer’s ravine (70mm on my long lens) and another horizontal one of just him as he comes and goes (300mm, same lens). My goal was to put together sort of a time-lapse set of photos, a rough film from these individual frames. The light varied; so did the weather and time of day, and I did miss a few days. So the set is not perfect. But I hope it captures some sense of what my neighbors and I see happening each year.
I am glad that the villagers no longer make that long journey to attack The Dancer, whether through attrition, apathy, or coming to their senses about how the world works. Having been up that wall myself, I know how long it takes: about 6 hours from the southern edge of the village (Ladreri) down to the raging Enguri, across its thin bridge, and up, up the other side, zig-zagging due to the steepness. I took the journey on horseback in July 2005, long before I had seen The Dancer for the first time or heard his story, my blood brother’s brother accompanying me. My goal was to meet some villagers on the other side of the mountain wall, summering there with their cattle, living in crude wooden huts away from electricity and cell phone signal, grazing the livestock on the best grass, making sulguni cheese from its milk, and sending it back to Etseri weekly. They no longer do this, Ladreri having lost quite a few of its population and the will to summer thus.
The view from up there north was all peaks shrouded in cloud, save proud Ushba’s peak, poking through and delighting me. Etseri almost invisibly far and down. Facing south, a small arc of rainbow seemed to be erupting from what looked like a volcano’s mouth. It was unforgettable. But too early for me to meet The Dancer. That vision and story would come many years later.
Now, in summer 2025, I might ask AI to add detail where my frames’ edges don’t match up with each other; or have it fill in whole frames to make the video transitions smoother. But that’s not me and my modus operandi. I prefer to keep things more real (although every frame is digital, and combined into the set on a laptop, I freely admit). One step farther from imaginary or fake, as I see it. Just as my fantastical stories about Svaneti are all based on photographic images, so is this set of movie frames just a collection of such images. I’ve tried to align them so that The Dancer’s position is as near to motionless as possible, despite his changing size as the snow around him melts and then he, too, least sun-hit, does the same.
This set of photos is going to take many hours more time to assemble than the usual several images I attach to one of my GT articles; but it’s definitely worth it. The Google Drive link for it is:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eutcRlORu3I4kvwSlIIoFqC17k7jpHK-/view?usp=drive_link
This time I notice a most evil monster’s grin to the left of The Dancer, in the days before he appears; this then gives way to a funnier monster, also with a grin, and finally to him. I also see that The Dancer is not quite the last bit of snow left on that rock face; but nearly so. All that remains for a scant few days after him is several inconsequential blobs, soon gone. Only Laila’s deep glaciers, higher up and further back, are permanent.
In the autumn, The Dancer’s gorge will take on many more warm hues as its deciduous trees’ leaves’ chlorophyll retreats from them. The evergreen will stay, well, greens, while we might be blessed with a dusting of snow further to dazzle the scene before the big leaf-drop and winter whitening turns the scene practically monochrome. But The Dancer will be only a memory by then… until he reappears next summer (barring a geological slip which alters his rock substrate and erases his form forever). Until then, Dancer, dissolved into the air and water, enjoy your freedom awhile. Winter snow will return your tableau to us; summer melt will set you free until you vanish again. Around and around. This is all part of the privilege of staying in one place and getting to know it more deeply.
Blog by Tony Hanmer
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
