Spatial function of light in staging of contemporary choreography (original) (raw)
Related papers
LIGHTING DESIGN SCHEMES AND COLOURS IN DANCE PERFORMANCES: THE MAGICAL ILLUSION
Granthaalayah Publications and Printers, 2023
Dance is a creative expression of movements, patterns, and stories they perform. The lighting design contributes to a complete theatrical experience for the audience by highlighting and framing every movement in each dance piece at the right moment. In solos and duets, lighting can emphasize this intimacy by using different spotlights in a particular area and it can make the rest of the stage dark. Different lighting fixtures will help by adding texture to the dance performances. The ambient lighting helps to set the scene, often shadow lighting, and backlighting produces striking images to elevate the body lines and also emphasize the shapes and angles. Few dance groups perform with the integrity of new technologies and Body. This article aims to attempt a definitive and comprehensive illustration of how light design plays an important role in contemporary performances. The lighting design as an art form within the theater is certainly a creative process that illuminates the performer's body to create a visual bonanza experienced by the spectator. In contemporary dance performances, it became an essential illustrative medium rather than decorative elements like in some traditional dance performances. Lighting design is a scenic art in contemporary dance performances concerned with atmosphere and 'body form' in relation to the performance space. The lighting design for a performance with a style and colour on a performer's body creates the magical illusion that is being experienced by the audience. Combinations of lighting design styles and body pigment are crucial and Indian contemporary dance groups adopted such technologies and make some interesting performances. This study analyzes how lighting design influences dance works as a creative approach to performance-making. Blending of costume, makeup, set, interactive media, and lighting design is an added advantage that we can observe in these Indian contemporary Performances. This paper analyzes how lighting design and dance are an integral part of a colorful performance.
A glimpse of light in the visual arts and the dance
IJASS PUBLICATION, 2022
This article presents ideas on the use of light in the visual arts and dance. On the former, the work of Robert Irwin, James Turrell and Christian Boltanski will be explored. Installations by the three artists will be analysed and contextualized in terms of light function. In dance, views from and about William Forsythe will be shared as an example of a popular choreographer that investigates lighting design. Considerations on a piece by Akram Khan will be also presented to approach contemporary tendencies in dance lighting. The conclusion summarizes points of convergence and distance between the works cited which aim to serve as an inspiration to artists of all fields.
The Efficiency & Aesthetics of Stage Lighting
This essay sets out a study, from both a historical and contemporary perspective, of the energy efficiency of lighting methods within the Performance Arts industry. It will inform about the early implementation of lighting methods and how subsequent improvements had consequential effects on the aesthetics of the creative process within theatrical productions. The essay will investigate individual progressive developments in contemporary lighting techniques. Also, it will discuss the following devices, their contribution to the aesthetics, on lighting designs from the implementation of such emergent methods. Additionally, it will further analyse, methods used in lighting control, and also the consumption of power when delivering light to enactments. The essay will investigate the energy efficiency of the current stage lighting luminaires. Furthermore, it will discuss the performance industry’s adoption of energy efficient equipment, and also the existing lighting units’ creative capabilities over emerging energy-efficient equivalents. The essay will offer a balanced argument of current lighting methods, as well as a need, in the first instance, for the recognition and potential employment of ever efficient technical innovations.
Lighting as facilitator of the theatrical transaction
The act of writing is firmly embedded within the praxis of the lighting designer. A script is annotated, documents to communicate creative concepts are created and records to facilitate the realised design are carefully crafted. Less formalised writing includes doodles, sketches and drawings to amplify design ideas conveying simply what few words can not. This act of writing, planning, plotting and recording is contrasted by the nature of light, an ephemeral effect that illuminates an object in space at a moment in time and is then gone. This article will examine some of the roles that illumination plays as both storyteller and communicator within a performance, through an examination of the lighting design for Epicentre Theatre Company's 2014 production of Reginald Rose's seminal play Twelve Angry Men (1955). The article will examine the role of the lighting to interact with the stage and the actors, as well as in supporting and reinforcing the communication and storytelling within the performance environment.
Stage lighting through the ages -Theatre to Classical Dance
2019
The widespread use of electrical energy coupled with the rapid progress in innovation and manufacturing of specialized lighting and sound equipments brought about a revolutionary change in the use of sound and lighting equipments in all forms of performing arts in the 20 th century.During the same period performances and presentation styles of music, dance and drama too underwent a metamorphosis in line with the modern times and artistic sensibilities of the audience. The history of stage lightings for theatrical productions in India is less than a century old, more so in case of classical dance productions. While technology is playing a crucial role in 21st century, Stage lighting has come a long way from the journey of necessity to an allied art in the present day.
Nordic Theatre Studies, 2014
In this article, I discuss the influence of stage lighting on the processes of scenic design and the functioning of performance space. There has been a huge advance in lighting technology with regard to their accessibility, usability, luminosity and costs during the past decades. Light can no longer be thought of as a necessity that can just be added to the performance. It has become one of its basic visual elements, directing and focusing the spectators gaze. The rhythm of changing lighting cues create a visual dramaturgy, which has turned visual design from solid constructrions to a score of temporal events. Today you seldom see a performance without any use of projections or digital videos. I begin with a quick historical survey on the adaptation of electric light in order to exemplify the artistic significance of technological innovations. I move on to a more philosophical conversation about the metaphorical connotations of light as a basic component of the visual mise-en-scène....
Light, Vitality, and Dynamism: An Introduction Of Time And Movement Into Theatre Lighting
2018
This thesis explores the dynamic possibilities of composing with light in the theatre as an autonomous medium. Through an archaeology of concept, it identifies the non-dynamic elements inherent to traditional theatre lighting such as the need for illumination, the linearity, the emphasis on spacial thinking over temporal thinking and the focus on visual images over in-depth experience. These elements shaped lighting practice as a predefined technical tool activating other mediums - culminating in a non-dynamic and rigid practice- instead of considering it as a performative and active element in itself. A comparison with Light Art, complemented with insight from psychology, unveils that time and movement are missing to the feeling of vitality triggered by a dynamic light. The thesis thus speculates on how to conceptually and technically reintroduce these fundamental elements of dynamism into stage lighting design, promoting a polyphonic and polyrhythmic temporal model over a linear a...
In the Shadow of a Dancer: Light as Dramaturgy in Contemporary Performance
This article examines the dramaturgy of light, addressing ways in which its ephemeral, spatiotemporal materiality may be understood as a crucial infrastructure of performance. I propose that ideas of new and expanded dramaturgies provide a productive frame with which to explore the generative impact of light on performance. Correspondingly, examining ways in which light operates within performance provides a fruitful means of analysing the dramaturgical structure of a work. I demonstrate ways that light sculpts both the form and the content of a specific example, the recent contemporary dance work <<both, and>> by the Russell Maliphant Company, and use this analysis to offer insight into the dramaturgical potential of scenographic light more broadly.