Dance Lighting

J

joble

Member
Within the next months I will do a light design for a dance production that takes place in April next year. Since I’ve only be doing theatre lighting, I am new to dance lighting, and I have lots of questions… To many of these questions I already found the answers by reading this forum.

Let me first explain the situation:
The dance performance will comprise a lot of styles (from ballet to street dance), so a big variety of moods need to be created by the light. The preminairy idea is:
  • 3 or 4 colorwash from the front (at least 2 subtle colors eg. pale gold,… and 1 or 2 a bit more explicit colors)
  • 12 Parnel as a 2 color top light (6 units per color)
  • 20 S4’s as side light
    • 4x Shinbuster (1 color - 2 units per side)
    • 4x Mid side light (1 color – 2 units per side)
    • 12x Pipe end – color wash (2 colors – 3 units per color per side)

And last but not least, I have some questions about this:

1) Will the amounts of side light and top light be sufficient to cover this stage (45’x30’) ?

2) What would be the typical use of the S4’s at the sides of the auditorium? I was thinking to use them as a stage wash with very pronounced colors.

Since I am relatively new in this field, any other tip and ideas are very welcome !!!

Regards,
Jo
 
My gut feel is that you are way short on side light. You don't have enough fixtures.

Assuming that you have little or no apron, and that the dancers will stay 6 feet from the cyc, you have about 29 feet of depth ( note your post showed depth as "35&rsquo" I am assuming you mean 35 feet )

So you are expecting each lane of side light to handle 15 feet. This is way to much. You need at least three sets of side lights. Four would be better. For a dance concert I would start by figuring out how to get adequate side light.

Given your inventory ( and assuming you really can't move thr FOH fixtures ) I would probably start with 6 booms of side light. Each with a shin, mid ( around 6 to 8 feet ) and high ( about 10 to,12 feet). This uses up 18 of your 20 fixtures. Note that you can change the color on the booms during the show as needed.

I doubt you will be able to get a reasonable two color tob / back light with 12 units. Do the math. You have 6 units per color. That gives me two rows of 6 units. You want each unit to cover about 15x15 feet. Unlikely to work. You will get better results by dedicating all 12 units in a single color.


If your auditorium sides are vertical pipes, use them to get side light on the downstage areas. The top unit goes to the far side of the stage, the bottom focuses closers. I doubt if you will get more than one color here,

You will probably light most of the show with your sides booms and auditorium sides. This means that you don't want to go too far with those colors. Get your color changes from front of house.

Good luck and have Fun
 
One of my big questions here is what kind of company are you designing for? If the dancers are high school age an younger, then I recommend talking with the director with regards to what you can do with your front light. The groups I have worked with were all very against front color washes for the majority of their numbers. To them, seeing the dancer's faces was priority number one. Hopefully, this director will be more open to color front washes, but I would check before you waist your time gelling lights only to have to pull your gels.

Just to second what John said side light is your friend here, so if you have the flexibility in your space, go with six booms with 3 units each.
 
Thinking about this later - One additional thought, and one change in my earlier post.

You don't have nearly enough fixtures to do what you are trying to do on a stage that big. You need to either cut down on the size of the stage in some way ( IE talk to your choreographers about closing down the space ) and/or simplify what you are trying to accomplish. It is usually more satisfying to do something simple well, than to try to do to much and have nothing look good.

You are not going to have enough side light / box boom light ( your auditorium sides) to light this large space - so you will have to have some front light in at all times. This says to me that if you have enough fixtures for two colors from the front, one of them ( or a mix of the two) wants to be in a neutral color so it can fill nicely with you side lights which are adding some shading. So I would suggest you do not do saturated colors from all of your front units. Have at least one neutral color kind of like R54.
 
There seems to be an inverse age rule in dance, the younger the dancer the more front light you need. If this is a kiddie show front light is fine. However, any other group will want side light. Booms and high sides are a major part of dance. While neither zooms or parnels would be my first choice for booms or high sides, they both could be used to solve your problem. As a minimum I would want at least two systems of booms and high sides, warm and cool. At 35 feet deep I would want 4 booms a side, 3 would be a minimum. Three deep on the parnels as high sides seems to match your inventory. Single, neutral color top is fine, as long as it mixes well with the warm and cool system. The FOH zooms should be able to give you some help, again I would try a warm and cool system. For FOH I agree with whats been said, don't go saturated. Two colors that mix to get you to "white", again a warm and a cool, can go a long way.
 
Thanks for your replies! I learned a lot already.
The performers are all children, and hence the audience mainly consists out of their parents. So front light will indeed have to be more prominent than usual in a dance performance. As front light I’ll follow your advice and use a cool and warm non-saturated color. The remaining fixtures might be used for specials…

About the stage depth I was not clear enough (sorry for that). The 35 foot I mentioned included a 9 foot apron and 3 foot behind the backdrop. This leaves only 23 foot of stage surface + 9 foot apron. A big difference!

For the top lights, I feel more comfortable by using 2 different (more saturated) colors, because top light and cyc are the only two ways to create a color wash over the stage.

How do I choose gels for the side lights. I understood non-saturated are the best choice here, but do I use the same colors for shin, mid and top? And should left and right be identical?

Regards,
Jo
 
joble said:
How do I choose gels for the side lights. I understood non-saturated are the best choice here, but do I use the same colors for shin, mid and top? And should left and right be identical?
Click to expand...

IMHO, left and right should be identical. I personally tend to stick with cool color in the shins and hotter color in the middle and top. I like a nice blue in the shin, light purple in the mid, and pink up top, but that depends entirely on the show and what the dancers are wearing and what you like to see on stage. Also, remember that you can always change your gels mid show if you need to.
 
After reading again my last post, I notice the word 'children' might be too vague. The age ranges from 6 up to 16. So keeping this inverse age rule in mind, the age is a significant detail, making both front and side light important.

Further I forgot to mention, I'm planning to rent some extra par64 fixtures as toplight, so i can keep the 12 parnel fixtures as high sides. There are also some spare 1kW asymmetric cyc lamps in the theatre, but I don't believe they can be uses as toplight. Or do they?

Jo
 
You can use almost any light for any situation it just may not always be the best option. You could certainly use the cyc lights for toplight but remember you'll be throwing a lot of light all over with it. So hang one and check or ask yourself if you're ok with how it would look. I probably wouldn't but thats because I've got something that fits the bill better. If that's one of your only options your answer might be different.
 
One other thought: How experienced are these dancers at working under stage lighting? Dance routines sometimes involve some fast movement and young dancers can become disoriented under the lighting. You want to have a few full tech rehearsals if possible to flush out any problems. If there is any fast dance, "beacons" can be helpful. These are basically marker lights placed in a few key locations to help keep dancers orientated. Small LED flashlights with a gel on them work pretty well.
 
Good advice so far. My two cents: when doing inventory triage, your most important side light is the shins. This is what really sculpts the dancers and makes them "float" on stage. Also, you can shutter-cut it off the floor, so if you light with only the shins, the dancers will be the only object on stage receiving light - a very dramatic look. Shins plus a couple color washes can go a long way. (Plus the frontlight for the kiddies).

When choosing colors, I like an unsaturated skin tone in the the shins. Warm or cool depends on circumstance. Then I get more saturated as I move up the booms, because more of this light will be getting on the floor. I like to top/back light in very saturated colors. I like pipe ends in an unsaturated color with a breakup gobo, as this adds highlight to the dancers, a little movement to the light, and paints the floor nicely.

As mentioned, for kids you need neutral frontlight. For pros I (almost) never use it. Personally, I like a VERY deep blue front wash to put sparkle into shadows. (Best is a dichroic, semi-UV color.) I HATE any warm, red or pink frontlight. That's a matter of taste, I guess.
 
JD said:
... If there is any fast dance, "beacons" can be helpful. These are basically marker lights placed in a few key locations to help keep dancers orientated. Small LED flashlights with a gel on them work pretty well.
Click to expand...
AKA spotting light, not to be confused with spot light.
 
To make sure I understood all well, I have summarized the main ideas…

  • Side light: 6 side booms with 3x S4 Zooms each (shin, mid, top). Gels can (will) be changed during the performance. More saturated and/or warmer colors in mids and even more in the tops.
  • Auditorium sides: Side light for the apron, same color as mid or high sidelights on stage
  • Pipe ends: 6 x 2 parnels. 6x cool 6x warm. If possible I'll also move 4 zooms from the FOH to here, and use break-up gobos combined with a non-saturated color.
  • Top/back light: 18x PAR64, in a 3x3 matrix. 2 different saturated color washes.
  • Cyc: RGB color mixing
  • Front light: Warm/cool non saturated colors in auditorium light. And some color washes in saturated colors.

For the little ones, I'll use the cool/warm front light, combined with the top light and cyc to color the scene. Eventually the sides and pipe ends can be used, but front light always dominates.
For the older dancers, the sides and pipe ends are used as a main light source. Top, cyc and front can be used to color the scene.

The beacons can indeed be an interesting idea. I'll discuss this with the choreographer.

Regards,
Jo
 
In my experience ( extensive ) with shows like this booms of any kind are a really bad Idea. Both big schools I used to do these for forbade booms entirely, and with good reason; they had both endured lawsuits from parents whose kids had been injured when kids crashed into them, or tipped them over on themselves when not properly supervised.
It might also be useful to bear in mind that the vital thing on these ( official slang: Dollie Dinkle ) shows is the kids faces, that's what the folks have come to see.
Think about shins on floor plates NOT SECURED to the deck, so they move if they get hit ( have inhibitive subs for these, if available). Take all the rest of the gear you've budgeted for the booms and expand your overhead
sidelight ideas. With dancers in this age group safety has to be your number one priority.
 
jstandfast said:
In my experience ( extensive ) with shows like this booms of any kind are a really bad Idea. Both big schools I used to do these for forbade booms entirely, and with good reason; they had both endured lawsuits from parents whose kids had been injured when kids crashed into them, or tipped them over on themselves when not properly supervised.
It might also be useful to bear in mind that the vital thing on these ( official slang: Dollie Dinkle ) shows is the kids faces, that's what the folks have come to see.
Think about shins on floor plates NOT SECURED to the deck, so they move if they get hit ( have inhibitive subs for these, if available). Take all the rest of the gear you've budgeted for the booms and expand your overhead
sidelight ideas. With dancers in this age group safety has to be your number one priority.
Click to expand...

I agree to a point but talk with the owner of the studio. Are her kids well behaved? Can you make the wings that they enter from large? For the pieces that consist of the youngers don't use side lights. I just did a show with 3-18 year olds I had 3 side booms per side and they never got even as much as a brush.

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk
 
Again i'd like to thank everyone for your replies !

For the sides i agree there is a certain risk of injuries. I have been thinking about a way to reduce the risk, and one of the ideas is to use 5 entrances on each side: 3 for the booms and 2 for the dancers.

In the meantime i've seen many photos and youtube movies of dance performances using side light combined with colored front light, and i do like the effect. But... If booms are for some reason not possible, would it be an option to use high sides (pipe ends) instead?

Regards.
 
I just wanted to jump in and say that safety should always be your number one concern in any theater / live event / production setting no matter the age of the performers.

It might be a good idea to sit down the group down and give them a quick safety talk about the space. Include things like the booms, the cyc (no touching), curtains, idea of going on and off stage due to the sudden change of brightness, opening the doors with others on the other side, fire extinguisher locations, emergency exits, other protocols, who to come to if there is a problem on stage during the performance... etc.


If you find that your booms still have issues with performers running into them, you can buy or make little led markers that you plug into a 9v battery that you can put on them OR you can tape them with white/glow tape and that somewhat helps. It's probably easier to tell dancers to exit upstage in the wings and to not have other dancers standing around watching the show IN the wings.
 
I’ve been implementing these ideas and the lighting plot for this dance recital is beginning to take shape!
Now I am wondering, in which situation would you choose each of these side lights (shin, mid, top and pipe ends)? Or when to combine them.
Regards, Jo
 
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