Yet another dance post but pretty urgent

[meghanpotpie]

Hi everyone,

I don't know how I keep getting myself into these sticky wickets. I'm teaching at a Junior College and have been assigned lighting for a dance piece taking place at a dance convention offsite. I won't be attending the convention. I have to manually write out the color and board programming. Choosing the lights for each cue is no problem but I'm going blind on color. The plot is pretty standard: Front Wash, Top Light, Side Light, Shins, Mids, Highs and no cyc. The costumes are red, olive, and navy blue. The choreographer wants warm washes for most of the song with maybe a white downlight here or there. Any ideas about what colors to use for someone who is still clueless about this?

 

[EdSavoie]

Do you have contact with the dance teacher or the group doing the dance? I strongly recommend talking to them about the mood conveyed by the piece and what they would like. The dance teachers I've met almost exclusively use colours, and occassionaly a dim flood to assure a minimum amount of light on stage.

If you have footlights, or any coloured source coming from the front, try using that to highlight the dancers. They allow you to color the scene whatever you want with other sources while still always being able to make out the dancer's movements.

Blues galore for slow pieces with few dancers. Try casting a lighter blue on the dancers because deep blues on them tend to look odd and very striking.

For hip-hop other other pieces with a strong, pulsing beat, try playing around with reds, purples, Greens, basically alternating everything you can throw at them.

For everything in-between, you can always try warm, yet still soft looks. Yellows, oranges, etc. Using a cyclorama to accent the back of the stage with whatever seems fitting.

 

[Amiers]

Red , olive and blue costumes. That's rough.

Either way. 32, 68, NC for your standard blind 3 color wash.

Then some other colors the accent the costumes.

Teal , Straw, Amber, Magenta, Deep Red.

Blind is hard. GOOD LUCK.