Official banner for the event, courtesy of UT Austin
Evolution is a contemporary dance concert that occurs each Spring. It is a collaboration between choreographers, composers, and lighting designers from UT Austin. This year, it occurred on April 20, at 7 pm in the B. Iden Payne Theatre.
This is my second year working on this show as a lighting designer. I had the opportunity to program the lighting for 3 dance pieces, totaling about 21 minutes of lighting content on the repository plot.
I was on 3 teams: Teams 4, 5, and 6 out of 10. I had several collaborators on this project, including 3 other lighting designers, 3 composers, and 7 choreographers.
Choreographers
Lauren Akard, E'ja Alexander, Faith Davis, Brock Gayault, Aída Hernandez-Reyes, Sarah Matney, and Skyler Tepedino
Composers
Andrew Guiou, Dillon Harger, Marion Henry
Collaborating Lighting Designers*
Jayden Chavez, Matthew Green, Nikolay Korygin
*Lighting Designers worked on their pieces individually but communicated often to ensure the show was successfully merged and could go as planned.
Overhead light plot for Payne Theatre, Designed by Sarah Elliott
Team 4: The Tower
Choreographers: Lauren Akard and Skyler Tepedino
Composer: Andrew Guiou
"The Tower" tells a story of grief, conflict, and loss inspired by the tarot card of its namesake. It features two dancers in direct conflict with one another. Through the piece, they dance around each other with ferocious intensity until one of them can't take it any longer.
My goals for the lighting of this piece was to keep it dark enough to convey the grim narrative, but also bright enough to clearly see the dancers and their sharp movements. To accomplish this, I utilized side lighting through the piece to illuminate the dancer's bodies in the dark environment.
The choreographers specifically requested cool tones for the first portion of the piece, with a slow transition to adding warm amber tones to indicate a significant change over time. I did this by utilizing a light blue overhead wash and bright purple side lighting at 80% intensity and saturation.
Another noteworthy feature of this piece is the "gobo animate" feature I use throughout the piece to give the gobo wash a "clicking" or "ticking" movement rather than being static or on a continuous rotation. I got very positive feedback on this feature, and we even decided to emphasize it by letting it hit the surface of the cyc, which added extra dimension in a unique way.
Video of Tech Rehearsal, Courtesy of Ellie Newton
Team 5: Afferent Gardens
Choreographers: E'ja Alexander, Brock Gayault, Aída Hernandez-Reyes
Composer: Dillon Harger
"Afferent Gardens" is an exploration of sensory surrealism in a decadent, painterly setting. It features a series of vignettes depicting a variety of small fables contained in a kaleidoscopic world. It explores the primal feelings of humanity through fantastical movement and character interaction.
My goal with the lighting of this piece was to contribute to the scenery and build unique visual worlds for the dancers to perform in. I enjoyed being able to create a wide variety of looks that conveyed a beautifully chaotic story. I had the chance to discuss best communication practices with this group, and they all did a great job communicating their desired visual moments upfront.
During the first vignette, I used the conventional gobo wash to portray rays of sunlight. In the second, I added a dark green color to those fixtures and set the cyc to a deep red to depict the new scene. I used very bright side lighting through the second half of the piece to intensify the illumination of the dancers, as the stories became more intense.
One special moment I particularly enjoyed was a solo moment in the sixth vignette. There was one dancer performing while the other dancers sat in stillness as witnesses. The remaining dancer was "trapped" in a tight beam of light that illuminated only her. She interacted with the beam of light by reaching out of it, only to find herself back in isolation. Eventually, the beam fades out and an even wash covers the full stage in a warmer tone, signifying a clear change in the story.
Video of Tech Rehearsal, Courtesy of Ellie Newton
Team 6: Synchronicity in Entropy
Choreographers: Faith Davis and Sarah Matney
Composer: Marion Henry
"Synchronicity in Entropy" explores the topics of sensory overwhelm while living in a loud internal and/or external environment. The piece has three sections that tell a linear story: the first is pure entropy: out of control, chaotic, overwhelming. The second part rips all of that away, leaving the performers to exist in a deprivation of those feelings. The dancers struggle to find themselves aligned with each other even in treacherous monotony. In the third section, the piece concludes with a joyful celebration of the spontaneity of life, leaning into the chaos and finding synchronicity in entropy.
I emphasized these elements by using the build of a widely spread hue effect to emphasize the feeling of overwhelm, as it is a visually loud effect. In the end, the effect goes up to 100+ RPMs, which would, in theory, cause only more chaos. The result, however, was a smooth blend of the fast effect resulting in an exciting and visually pleasant scene. The ending is circular, building off of how it started, but with greater unity among the dancers. I did this by lighting more of them rather than just one at a time, which was how it started.
Video of Tech Rehearsal, Courtesy of Ellie Newton