Dance Lighting Suggestions

[Hunter.tech]

I am a student and I was hired to design a student repertory dance concert that takes place in a gym. They lay down marley, have pipe and drape along the back wall and 2 sets of pipe and drape to create "wings" on the side of the stage. In the past they have rented 4 booms (one in each wing as upstage and downstage sidelight.) On all the booms there is an LED par at the top, a source 4 PAR in the middle, and an LED ellipsoidal at the bottom for shins.

While all this is nice and I'll probably rent something very similar again, the company has an extra couple hundred dollars to spend on rental lights so I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for any kind of neat or interesting effects I could create with lighting instruments to really give it that extra "wow" factor. Or if anyone has suggestions as to how to improve upon the current set up.


Other info:

1. There are no current lighting positions in the space so to hang a light, I'd also have to rent a place to hang it; like a boom.
2. I'll be programming on a ETC Nomad.
3. There is not a lot of access to power in this room. In the past they have used dimmer packs with dimmers parked at full to power the LED fixtures simply due to lack of outlets in the room.
4. Time is of the essence. I will have 2 days to program the show with about 15-25 minutes per piece.

I have never done dance lighting on my own before so any information you can provide would be very helpful and appreciated.

 

[SteveB]

Dump the Pars all around and replace with LED ellipsoidals, better beam control. Maybe double head highs, double shins. Make the booms as tall as possible and do a top unit. Maybe an incandescant set of units with a breakup gobo wash. US booms do a wash across the backdrop ?, maybe a gobo wash their as well ?

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

How deep is the stage - front leg to rear back drop?

 

[Hunter.tech]

How deep is the stage - front leg to rear back drop?

It changes depending on which gym they use each year and I wont get to the space to see it until Monday but typically about 15' deep.

 

[Amiers]

Get some gobos. Couple hundred is all you will be able to afford.

 

[Lynnchesque]

You could do a ground row of LED pars, uplighting the upstage drape for a kind of cyc effect (Dancers in silhouette is a classic look). Depends on the pipe and drape though, white and shiny picks up more light than black and matte.

 

[Chase P.]

Some birdies or led pars as foot lights could be fun, no new hang positions needed. I also like the idea of gobos, maybe from the top of the booms, cross shooting the stage?