Robert Wierzel
Set and Lighting Design

Our intention is to create an appropriate visual world in which the live interaction of technology and dance can unfold and be powerfully felt.

Unlike the strict linear progression of conventional dance or theater, this event contains an element of interactive game. Believing the central enjoyment of a game is watching chaos contained by rules, we chose a visually tangible yet abstract context in which play can occur with limited distraction. Scenery and lighting are conventionally meant to evoke a time, a place, and a mood. Here we want it to act like a place, an installation. Theater suggests, art is. We hope the environment can do some of both.

Echoing the rigid confines of the motion capture 'box,' the lighting and scenery are organized by simple parameters. Lighting is shaped by the set's volume, picking the dancers out of a dark void or placing them on a plane of color. The background is composed of a series of adjustable shapes and planes which in tandem can produce a variety of static or moving apertures onto a glowing light field. In this way, the interaction of projected image and changing spatial dynamics will alter the viewer’s understanding of dimensional space.

In Trisha Brown's How Long- the organized complexity of the movement is read against a world of simple static shapes. The projections sometimes echo these shapes [or the shapes echo them] and create a solid depth, wavering on the brink of dissolution. We seek to heighten the dynamic piece by creating a visual feeling of confinement that the movement and coupled projections burst.

In Bill T. Jones’ 22, the structure of the piece has a more weighted quality. The shapes expressed in Bill’s movement seem familiar somehow. I felt it was important to contrast this with a looser, more fleeting environment. Large planes of the glowing backdrop are revealed, their geometry transforming dramatically as the event unfolds. The shapes produced coalesce briefly, then gently transform. In this way the viewer’s perception is constantly kept active. It is my hope that this course of action will allow for a unique personal experience of the piece.