I consider this to be my senior showcase for lighting as much as it is a showcase for the dancers. For this show I was the lead lighting designer. I helped the other 4 lighting designers with their designs as well as managed the paperwork end of things and was a go between for the club and the auditorium. I updated the rep plot to include all of the specials and re-wrote the magic sheets for the event.
All Videos Shot by Fred City Photo. Used by permission.
A Note about the recordings: The camera used for these recordings had some problems with the autofocus when the lighting would change suddenly. This is the fault of the videographer and there is nothing to be done about it. Any places where the pictures suddenly seems to darken is a problem with the recording equipment and is not part of the lighting design for any of these performances. Also, these performances were ripped from a DVD and due to the compression used by the ripping software and this hosting site the quality of the image has degraded significantly.
Jumping into Puddles
Choriographer: Amanda Johnson
Amanda was a senior and she asked me to design the lighting for her dance. I worked with her much earlier in the semester than any of the other choreographers because she always asked me to design her pieces. She shared with me that this piece was very difficult for her to do. It was in Icelandic and had to be significantly cut down from the original song. The dance was not finished until 3 days before the performance. Lighting this piece I used the music to build the lights into a crescendo then fade off as the dancers passed through the hula-hoops. This design for me was my seminal work from UMW. It was everything that I had learned in my time at school. For me this dance represented a bunch of girls getting together and celebrating life and playing and having fun with each other. Designing this piece was as easy as breathing. I designed the piece from start to finish in about 45 minutes and nothing was changed from that original design.
Turn Your Devils Gold
Choreographer: Rebecca Lallande
Rebecca was a senior so this work was very special to her. She wanted 2 distinct looks for the two repeating motifs in the song. At the beginning of the song she wanted to keep the audience in suspense and have one whole guitar riff in total black out. As with most of my design work, I let the movement of the dancers be my guide for designing. The lyrics of the song are very odd. The basic idea of the song is that the main dancer is dealing with all of her worries and Devils in her life in the more upbeat parts o the song she is able to keep her devils in check and rid herself o them to an extent, but they are never more than a worry (the heaver parts of the song) away.
La Danse, Pure et Simple
Choreographer: Kate Miller
I jumped at the chance to design this piece because I had never designed a ballet piece before. For me this was a study in how to be subtle with the lighting changes. I liked the challenge of making softer Q’s as well as trying to balance the front light with the rest of the lights on stage. Because of dimmer limitations, we only were able to have no color front light in the plot. This is why very few of the designs use front light; it washed all of the color out of the stage. My favorite part of this dance is when the dancers spin into the circle and the kickers come on and it looks like there are twice as many dancers on the stage—to me it seems like the actual act of dancing multiplied the dancers.
Got that Love on Lockdown
Choreographer: Jamia Jordan
This was the last song I designed of the 6 I did for the show. At that point, I was pretty burnt out and did not have a lot of time to work on the lighting for it. I wanted to pay some homage to the jail house rock motif and thought about the song from Chicago where all of the women are stuck in the jail cells and are silhouetted against a red background. With this song, I thought the dance really spoke for itself. Looking back on it, I would have added more Q’s to spice it up, but on the whole, the lighting in this song just sets the mood for the audience as the dancers move through it. The Most difficult part of this dance was the strobes that were supposed to happen when the main dancer is swirling in the middle of the stage. One of the strobes stopped working and there was no way to get the electric down in between numbers to repair it. Also, the strobes were not very bright to begin with.
Heavy
Choreographer: Candace Hicks
Please note: the music for this piece is the live track. The Choreographer did not turn in the soundtrack on time for the video people to make it nice. I took inspiration from the very beginning of the song which to me sounded like a combination of industrial and oriental influence. The lighting Q’s in this are specifically slower than in most of the other dances in the show to try and simulate the “Heavy” that the dancers are feeling. Looking back on this piece, it seems to me that the dancers had a hard time with it.
Battle with the Bros
Choreographer: Shanita Mitchell
This was a fun song. Basically it is a girls verses guys hip-hop dance. The problem with this dance as with the dance Got that Love on Lockdown is that the strobes did not function correctly. The Choreographer wanted me to light to the music as much as possible, which meant that I needed to catch the heartbeat in part of the dance. I found this to be quite a challenge. Our music and lighting was not linked, meaning that if the lighting board operator did not go to the next Q at precisely the right time, the effect would not be seen at all.
