I will be lighting the upcoming UVa dance show at the Music Resource Center on Thursday and Friday (Free). It occurred to me that most of the choreographer never did talk to a lighting designer. There is a dance program at UVa which is new of this past year. This is the indirect reason why I’m here in Charlottesville. My wife, Rose, is the dance teacher at UVa. I digress! The program only consist of dance classes at the moment so therefore none of them really had an introduction to design which most BFA program do have. UVa being UVa, it doesnt have this. So, I did google for a quick introduction text about how to talk to a lighting designer and of course I found couple of interesting links. I did find the obvious wikipedia article on stage lighting and lighting design which is helpful to some extent. They do cover part of the process but it’s geared towards concerts more then anything else. Then I found this article by Jeffrey E. Salzberg titled “How to work with a lighting designer” which is good but not really relevant to a first time dance show for a brand new dance program without a proper theatre aka, only have 8 lights to play with. I also found another website called stagelightingprimer.com which gives a basic introduction to lighting for students.
When it comes down to it, I need to skip a few steps and talk basic with students. A round up of terms we use in theatre like position, instruments name, color and the most important thing, have them realize that the lighting designer is the person to thrust for lighting the piece. If you don’t thrust him, he/she shouldn’t have been hired in the first place. Their first piece should gives them a taste of what it takes to do a show and at the same time, not being excessive. It will be an easy lights up, change of lights and lights down. 20 minutes each for setting light cues, … lets go!