Stick Dancing

Stick Dancing
From the Lost Drawings Series by Peter Bogdanov
Graphite and ink on newsprint
They called him Stickman. Not because he was thin—though he was—but because he never went anywhere without his favorite staff: a crooked wooden stick worn smooth from years of spinning, flipping, and dancing like no one was watching.
“Stick Dancing,” drawn during Peter Bogdanov’s art school years, captures the essence of a figure in joyful motion, even in stillness. The pose is sharp, full of rhythm. One leg bends, the torso leans, the stick becomes an extension of the dancer’s will—part prop, part partner.
Bogdanov’s lines are confident, loose yet controlled, as if drawn to music. Ink outlines exaggerate gesture and balance, while graphite adds nuance to muscle and movement. You don’t just see the dance—you feel it. The energy pulses through the limbs, captured mid-move like a photograph of motion too wild to repeat the same way twice.
The story goes that this dancer would appear in city parks, alleyways, even art school courtyards—spinning his stick to the rhythm of invisible drums, improvising as if the world were his stage and no one had the right to ask why. He danced for himself. And maybe for those lucky enough to catch a glimpse.
The original drawing was among the many works lost in the 2024 hurricanes that swept through Bogdanov’s Florida archive. But a digital scan survived—an echo of movement preserved just in time.
To own “Stick Dancing” is to honor the spirit of spontaneous joy—the kind of rhythm you don’t learn, but live. It’s a portrait of freedom in motion, a sketch of a soul who found poetry in a stick and turned sidewalks into stages.