Lighting for dance

[rmarchand]

Hi guys, I'm not as experienced as the rest of you so please bare with me!

 

I work as a technical co-ordinator at the University of Leicester student's union, and as such am used to lighting club nights and live music. However in about 2 weeks we have a dance competition called "battle of the dances". In it there will be all different types of dance from ballet, modern and Jazz, to street dance and break dancing. To further complicate matters there will be small groups of 3/4 to groups of around 20-25, and I have no experience of lighting dance events!

 

Please could you give me any tips as to how to light this event. I have a tri-light truss on motors over the stage with 20 x 13 amp sockets, a front bar with 12 x 16amp ceeform sockets, two side bars over the audience each with 8 x 16 amp sockets and a further rear bar at the back of the room with 8 x 16amp sockets.

 

Lights wise I only have an extremely limited in house rig of 20 Par 64's with CP62's and 4 Robe Spot 250XT's. Gel's I can usually blag from my other place of work, and may also be able to get hold of a few other lights on the blag too.

 

Any advice would be welcome, but particularly some guidance on colours that could work well, and what types of lights (probably generics) that would help create a varied atmosphere, whilst not getting in the way of the actual dance performance itself.

 

Thank you for your help,

 

Rob.

[jayselway]

One for Bryson, me thinks! :huh:

 

In the meantime, the forum search tool brings up these topics:

 

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[niclights]

As has been said many times before, lighting design is artistic and something to experiment with. There's no definitive way of lighting anything. That would be a very boring world!

 

I would initially make sure I have enough to cover the stage, from front, sides or combination, preferably without washing out rear of stage. Ideally enough to have two or three colour washes but this will have to balanced against dynamic rear lighting and number of available lanterns. If you have a cyc I'd be tempted to rig the movers to project onto it, otherwise hang from the rear for effects. Take remaining fixtures and rear hang with some symettrically focused colour washes.

 

As for colours make a decision on whether you want bright, dark, gentle etc. and then pick compatible colours. The number of different colours will depend on exactly how many lanterns and how many you can/need to assign to each colour etc.

[Bryson]

One for Bryson, me thinks! :huh:

As if by magic, the shopkeeper appeared....

 

I'll precis what I've said elsewhere:

 

Lighting dance is quite a different proposition to lighting theatre. We're primarily interested in seeing the bodies move in space rather than being 100% certain of facial expression and intelligibility. This is what makes lighting dance so liberating and interesting!

 

Anyway, from a sheerly practical point of view, what this means is you need lots of "sculptural" light that makes sure it's not too "flat". That means a fair bit of backlight, toplight and above all, sidelight. You really, really want to get some lanterns on the floor. Given the variable group sizes, you probably want to "zone" the stage so that you can create more intimate pools of light for the smaller groups. Rig as little frontlight as you can get away with, and use it sparingly, if at all.

 

Given, in this case, the limited stock of lanterns and circuits, and not knowing the size of your stage, I'd be tempted to use the Robes as floor-based sidelights which you could also point at the cyc, and then use your pars as two or three colours of backlight and a "pipe-end" wash (ie: rigged overhead but as far to the sides of the truss as you can get, and then focussed on the far side of the stage). Stick two pars out front as an open white straight-on "bosh" of frontlight and you're probably set. Alternatively, you could rig the Robes overhead for specials and put some of the pars on the floor, but I suspect then the coverage on stage will be tricky. If you can get extra lanterns (and find a way to circuit them) a zoned (4, 9 or 16 zones depending on the size of the stage) wash of fresnels doing toplight will serve you well.

 

I'll leave it to you to resolve how your circuiting works! I assume the 13a aren't dimmed? That might make your mind up about placements.

 

As for colour, that's entirely personal choice. Saturated stuff for the street dance, subtle for the ballet and contemporary might be a starting point, but you can do anything you like.

 

HTH. If you need any more help, let me know.