A light touch: leading designers on
illuminating dance shows
Excerpts from an article by Kate Wyver:
For the negligible space it takes up in reviews, you would be forgiven for thinking that lighting is a secondary aspect of staging dance; something added on to fit a director’s vision. But, requiring significant technical expertise and a keen eye for beauty, the manipulation of space through lighting for dance is something of a magic trick. “Light can be whatever you want it to be,” says designer Michael Hulls. “Poetry. Architecture. Choreography. It is something that creates an emotional response.”
He is not good at making “ugly” work on stage, he admits. “I set out to create beauty that would make grown men weep.” It is an innate tendency that follows him around; sometimes he passes a house with open curtains and a big, harsh light on indoors and thinks: ‘Why are you doing that to yourselves?’
Hulls and Carter have both focused on non-narrative dance throughout their careers ... While every type of show is distinct, with a keen difference between narrative and non-narrative dance, Hulls argues: “It’s all bloody theatrical, isn’t it? You’re in the dark in the theatre and the lights come up.”
... long-term collaborations, with a built shared language, are common in dance. Hulls has spent a large part of his career working with choreographer Russell Maliphant. He describes his show Two, celebrating 30 years this year, where the sole performer’s body is seen in snatches and shadows, as “seven minutes, 43 seconds of gold dust”. Now a visiting professor at Rose Bruford having won multiple awards, Hulls fell into the career by accident, working with dance improvisor Laurie Booth on a show – he improvised the lights as Booth improvised the dance.
His work with Maliphant, he explains, came from a shared desire to highlight lighting on stage. “In dance, the primary collaboration has always historically been between the choreographer and composer, even if the composer’s dead,” he says. “We wanted to supplant that relationship and put the lighting designer in that upfront role, to try things out with light and movement.” He describes it as a process of discovery, like putting “two blobs in a Petri dish and seeing what reactions come out of it”.
Ultimately, says Hulls, the purpose of light is to “direct the focus of the audience to what’s important”.
The full article is published here: https://www.thestage.co.uk/features/a-light-touch-leading-designers-on-illuminating-dance-shows
