Ballet LIghting with no wings

[vinntec]

I started using some spare LED battens on the inner edges of our portals for side light. Nothing hot, and remarkably effective as their beams are very narrow. Working great where I'd have used shin busters and all the problems with size, heat and sharp edges.

Hi Paul - if we have another ballet then I will be looking at options to provide sidelighting which don't involve a boom. However as this company has existed for 150 years this year and this is the first ballet ever, I will hold fire for now especially as LED technology is still moving ahead.

[LXbydesign]

I agree Paul.

 

Ive started using batterns for side light, if in restricted space and if more room allows then usually add Source 4 profiles and S4 pars.

 

Usually though, its just the battens - which the light output / focus Im quite happy with, complete swatchbook of colours to hand and cast not liable to get burned by hot lamps / hot wings (not the chicken type :-p)

 

With the way LED technology is going and more price effective, Im sure we'll be seeing a lot more batten side lighting to come.......

[smalljoshua]

In a contemporary thing I had to do last summer (lots of movement, haze and even some strobe) I used the LEDJ Colour Storm Quad 1m Battens, pixel mapped, with an LED Par for shins. It gave really quite amazing side light with the possibilities of having a different shade for shin, torso and head.

 

Josh

[vinntec]

Sorry to start this topic up again, but need to tap experts about how best to use the cyc in a ballet. The choreographer is very experienced, but has not been an artistic director before. Whereas I have never lit a ballet (except for scenes in musicals)! So thanks for advice and help so far!

 

My one remaining doubt is, how should I advise the choreographer to use the cyc? There are particular scenes where it will be used for effect or to silhouette so I am thinking about generally speaking. Does it tend to work better bright with lighter colours, such as sky blue, or does this make the dancers hard to see? Should I stick to more saturated colours (dark blue etc al)? It is lit by LED cyc units so can be any colour including white or left "dark" apart from reflection, but just wondered what the general rules of thumb are?

[paulears]

Most won't know how to answer that. The ones that do, probably have quite fixed ideas. One I work with quite a bit always wants big coloured shadows. I did it once with a couple of PAR64s on the extension over an orchestra pit - so that with the colours I had in them, there were cyan and yellow shadows that looked interesting - the silhouettes complimenting the body forms. I decided that after the first outing, I didn't really like it - but she's technical savvy enough to now request this whenever I light her shows. Other ballet companies I've worked with were not that interested in lighting when visiting a number of venues with varying facilities. Not every venue has a white cyc, so their lighting might be quite low on the list.

[J Pearce]

Personally, I quite dislike using a cyc for my own designs, but the choreographers at work are very keen on having a cyc.

I used to use only saturated primary and secondary colours at fairly bright intensities, but recently I've got into using murky pale colours, at just enough intensity to be noticeable. This requires a careful focus though!

 

I too once did shadows onto the cyc for a very clear designed effect, and then it crept into every piece because people thought it looked 'cool', when it didn't really contribute to the narrative.

[Don Allen]

The cyc can be very strong for some dances but overall it is there to set the mood or theme so if in doubt keep the levels down a bit. When starting a dance with only the cyc as a silhouette for the dancer, the cyc is at max and a strong colour. As you add side light and back light, you might dim the cyc but it usually stays at full for these silhouette dances.

 

I consider the cyc an essential tool for lighting dance and like to have at least four colours on it, but led's are starting to free up that restriction.

 

If the dance is being filmed, use a different colour on the cyc to the dancers costumes as cameras tend to lose them in the background if the cyc and costume colours are too close.

[vinntec]

Hi guys. Good feedback. thanks. There are three ballerinas and they are all wearing black costumes (top + "hot pants") with a bit of white underneath the top. Ballet shoes are flesh-coloured. So most of the reflection of light will come from the arms and legs, and off the black matt floor. The focus plan is to have no direct light on the cyc apart from cyc lights, with the exception of some birdies downstage which uplight at the beginning to cast shadows deliberately.

 

The cyc is only there to set the mood most of the time and the audience's focus needs to be on the dancers. It sounds like the best thing to do is set the lighting the way the choreographer wants, get a stagehand with blacks to stand in, then adjust cyc and backlighting so that the "dancer" shows up clearly. Obviously with LED cyc and backlighting units this is not such a big deal but it sounds like best to just make it look right? There are seven "scenes" so we can afford a little time to experiment with this. The lighting design has deliberately provided more lighting than we might need to allow for fine tuning without having to rig anything extra, even if part of it doesn't get used.

[Don Allen]

If you can set it up without any extra expense, it is always handy to have a range of different elements to provide something different for each dance. Then the choreographer can choose what suits them, or may even be influenced by what lighting is available when finalising a dance.

 

The cyc is the easiest canvas to use in dance as you can have different gobos such as fire escapes for West Side Story or even a Par56 from low on each side of the cyc focussed up and across as a diagonal X. Simple effects that add patches of colour.

[vinntec]

Yes I was keen to put some gobos onto the cyc, for instance a cross to show that the ballet is staged inside the ballerina's church. But the choreographer won't have any of it, as he wants the ballet to have an abstract setting which allows the audience's imagination to work out what is going on and where. So no eye candy permitted, but reinforcement of the scene's mood with the dancers clearly visible (tinted with faces visible).