Adrian Madison Cario hosts this episode on the relationship between lighting design and dance, featuring some of the 20th century's most prominent designers—Tom Skelton, Beverly Emmons, Jennifer Tipton, and Mark Stanley. Now the CEO of San Francisco's Minnesota Street Project, Cario draws upon their beginnings in lighting design to illuminate different perspectives on design, collaboration, and building a world on stage.
Adrian Madison Cario hosts this episode on the relationship between lighting design and dance, featuring some of the 20th century's most prominent designers—Tom Skelton, Beverly Emmons, Jennifer Tipton, and Mark Stanley. Now the CEO of San Francisco's Minnesota Street Project, Cario draws upon their beginnings in lighting design to illuminate different perspectives on design, collaboration, and building a world on stage.
Special thanks to New England Public Media, for their support of this episode of PillowVoices.
[Music begins, composed by J.S. Bach, performed by Jess Meeker]
NORTON OWEN: Welcome to PillowVoices, a production of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival with content from the Pillow Archives. I’m Norton Owen, the Pillow’s Director of Preservation, and it’s my pleasure to introduce Madison Cario, your host for this episode on the relationship between lighting and dance. Madison serves as CEO of a San Francisco-based arts organization, known as the The Minnesota Street Project and The Minnesota Street Project Foundation and they participated in the Pillow’s National Dance Presenter’s Forum at the Pillow in 2019. But Madison’s journey with dance and the arts began as a lighting designer as you’ll hear more about directly.
MADISON CARIO: When I was asked what I might focus on in this episode of PillowVoices, I immediately thought of the invisible labor that brings a work to life onstage. I’ve worn many hats, worked in nearly every role in the arts ecosystem, but my journey with dance began in a dark theater, with a single beam of light, illuminating a moving body before my eyes. That moment changed my life and my life’s trajectory.
I had just left the Marine Corps - or rather was forced to leave the Corps for being queer, and I stumbled into a dance performance, of all things, in Philadelphia. Almost literally like a moth to a flame, I found myself drawn to that lit stage.
I stepped on a path of retooling my technical skills, as an engineer in the military, to stagecraft, light design, and operations. Eventually, I stepped into the spotlight as a performer, speaker, and leader and now facilitate teams in service of the field that illuminated my path forward.
In this episode, we will uplift and explore the enchanting and highly functional relationship between light and dance. We will hear several designers’ stories, and approaches to collaboration, as they share their perspectives from behind the scenes, behind the stage, and in that hidden booth behind the audience.
We begin with a conversation between two prominent 20th century lighting designers - Tom Skelton, who worked with José Limón, and Beverly Emmons, who worked with Merce Cunningham. This was captured at the Pillow in the summer of 1984, in a program for the festival’s interns. Here, Skelton talks about his first interaction with dance and how he found what would become his career in a profession that, as we will learn, wasn’t actually a profession yet.
TOM SKELTON: I got interested in dance when I, uh, went to see, I was in the service, and I got a free ticket to see to see the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo and I thought I should see what dance is all about.
I walked out of that theater and down 6th Avenue and the Ziegfeld Theater had a strange-looking creature named Martha Graham. She was doing a matinee, and a woman I later learned was Isadora Bennett, said, ‘hi soldier, do you want to see the end of the show?’ And ‘come on in’ and she took me in and I saw Every Soul is a Circus. And it was just dazzling and so I went up to Isadora then afterwards and said, ‘can I come back tonight?’
MADISON CARIO: Now unfortunately this recording has degraded quite a bit so I will fill in some of the gaps. Skelton, once out of the service, went on to apprentice with the Graham company and studied dance while also learning the ropes as a stagehand and stage manager apprentice, which at that time, in the 1950s, was who often ran the lights as well. When Skelton joined the Graham Company he met Jean Rosenthal, a long-term collaborator with Graham who challenged Skelton and the field to think differently about lighting design and dance.
Rosenthal, now credited as the originator of contemporary dance lighting, had a major role in developing the field. She eventually penned The Magic of Light, a book that was considered a foundational text for dance lighting designers. Here is Beverly Emmons, along with Tom Skelton, talking about Rosenthal’s influence on the field.
BEVERLY EMMONS: Lighting for dance, as you articulated it to me and as I understand it, was invented by Jean, with Martha’s permission, in a sense. Martha sort of pressing her to do something for her works. And one can see, essentially, lighting design really being invented ‘cause Jean was sort of a stage manager. Not sort of but had, at very young, been involved in ‘helping,’ which then turns into production stage management work in theatre. Getting the shows on for The Mercury, Orson Welles, all of those kinds of things very early, in the 30’s, you know middle-30s, she was doing all of those things. So she was a real Broadway pro already. But the Mercury and all those things were the avant garde, off-Broadway kinds of stuff, at that time. And so she was involved, at that time, but that was theatre lighting. But still in those days as it still is Europe, there was no such thing as a lighting designer as a separate person. And I often feel that it's Jean’s. Also, Jean’s desire to make a quiet schedule and proceed in an orderly fashion. And then suddenly, that moment would come when the director would say not that blue and the electrician would say, well, that's the only blue I've got and then bam, there goes your schedule. And I could just see it was Jean’s quiet personality, inserting yourself between those two warring gentlemen and saying, ‘well, no, actually I’ve actually ordered a whole bunch of other blues and just quietly becoming the interpreter and then and sliding in and creating a whole profession which hadn’t existed before.
TOM SKELTON: Also with a tremendous sense of organization, she just couldn't stand the disorganization.
BEVERLY EMMONS: That’s right - all the paperwork that we do, and the way of organizing hookups and instrument schedules and focus charts and all of that really is based on her.
TOM SKELTON: Her thought process, yeah.
BEVERLY EMMONS: Yeah, yeah.
TOM SKELTON: And so, she, I agree she invented dance lighting. And we haven’t moved very much further than that.
BEVERLY EMMONS: We just added more equipment,
TOM SKELTON: Or taken ideas, for instance, I think I invented backlighting. But the idea certainly came from her because she had two backlight specials in the Graham plot that I thought were great. And then when I got four extra instruments, I put some more up. I then I discovered you needed a second color, because you couldn't always bring the pipe in and change the color for the next ballet.
BEVERLY EMMONS: Right.
TOM SKELTON: But she was very caring, very involved. To see her talk with a dancer or a choreographer. Choreographer, specifically, I think has influenced all of us tremendously and it changed our attitude to towards the collaborative process. I think of all 1000s of modern dancers that I've worked with, at the Y, for instance, where you go to the dancer’s studio, or whatever they can afford, and you see the rehearsal and you talk about the piece. And you try to find a method of communication, which is really being terribly supportive in all kinds of ways that have absolutely nothing to do with lighting.
And they say, well, can you help me change the choreography to fit the theater, because you know where the legs are, and where the entrance are and what the problems are, and they don't just handle the cross-over, or whatever that particular support mechanism is, I think makes most dance lighting designers quite unique, and why most successful Broadway designers have a dance background.
BEVERLY EMMONS: The going to the rehearsal and seeing the ballet for the first time is, is the is the beginning. And, as always, the beginning should be, should be done, right. And one of the things that I feel is very important, what I what lighting is one of the least verbal of art forms, I mean, you can't even put it on paper really with watercolor and say, Well, this is what I'm going to make you, do you like it. It's the last element added in to the piece
TOM SKELTON: at the highest moment of tension,
BEVERLY EMMONS: right, and you have to be the, you have to operate in the eye of the hurricane. And you have to essentially make that calm out there. In that sense, in the in the sort of craziness of getting into the theater. But but it begins when you as a designer, you need to know, you need to know where you're going. Because all of the questions about a piece where you put this, where is that where you put the boom, what color, all of the questions that create the chaos can be answered, if you have a very cool, and if you're self-centered on where the pieces are with and where the company is. And and I find you begin with you must again, because we're designers, you begin to work.
And then you go to the studio and see the work. And one of the most important things I feel with a choreographer is I don't, I don't want them to tell me about the event. I don't want any words to interfere between me and their experience, they're not going to get a chance to explain to the audience, my guest today is about No, obviously, the curtain is going to open, and the dance will be presented wordlessly. And that's the way I want to experience it in the studio.
MADISON CARIO: Just like everyone has a different origin story for their relationship with dance, what I’ve been truly fascinated by in listening to the talks we are sharing today, is just how many approaches to designing there are.
In the last clip, Skelton and Emmons shared how they like to know next to nothing about a choreographer’s vision or intended meaning of the work. They view lighting as an abstract element to an abstracted form. I felt quite the opposite when I was designing and aligned more toward the approach of Jennifer Tipton in the next clip. Here we join choreographer Dana Reitz in conversation with Tipton at the conclusion of a week-long workshop that they co-led in June 1999 at the Pillow. This workshop, titled Light and Movement, brought dancers, choreographers, and lighting designers from across the US and Europe together and asked them to work interchangeably. Meaning designers worked as dancers and dancer-makers and dancers and choreographers stepped behind the board and designed the lights.
JENNIFER TIPTON: I am always aware of the specific beams of light that are in the space, even on a well-lit stage like this, it becomes a volume space to me. So that volume of space and the lighting, become a partner for the performers in it. It is our aim in this workshop, to encourage people to begin to look and see the space of the stage in this way. And to see how a body truly, not only moves in the light, but reflects the light in the eye of the audience. I'm always amazed at the difference between someone who is unaware of what the body is doing in the space in the light, and someone who is aware of what it is and how they look. And I also welcome the opportunity to be able to get into the light so that I can feel what it feels like.
DANA REITZ: As a choreographer and performer for years I, I always treated light as a real partner and equal partner in the space, I often don't use music. And I need to be able to focus and concentrate deeply in the space and light as my partner helps me do that. And I create a place, I create place with it. The perceptions of all those things keep shifting as the light and movement shifts around. And I was lucky enough to work with Jennifer and 1987 was our first collaboration, and we've worked many projects since then - pushing pushing the venues a little bit farther, pushing ourselves farther to see what to do beyond the traditional sort of light and movement thing. So as a performer on the inside, it took me years to figure out what it looked like for me on the outside. I would say, ‘it doesn’t’ feel good, it doesn’t… I don’t like this.’ And getting into me being on the outside and just designing from the outside as well as from the inside, not just with light but from choreography as well and really making it very visually whole as well as kinetically and emotionally whole. So, Jennifer's been a terrific partner for me all these years because she really understands the structural integrity of composition to really understand, from beginning to end, how it goes through, how she works with me. And that's what I hope for in all the elements that are involved. So we just keep playing.
JENNIFER TIPTON: Yes, I, I like to describe light or lighting as music for the eye. I feel that that light can carry you from place to place just as fluidly as music can, that light follows that light, on stage, follows the same rules that you do the musical competition. You set a theme and you have variations on that theme. And you develop a theme over the period of a piece, and it has composition exactly like music.
So, but the point I'll take then is that as, as we sing it together really and I I don't use light as music in the sense of that's a score that I dance to, either and that is clear and the collaboration between both of us – the point we're making is the whole of it is the score. There's there's light there's movement, there's whatever else is involved, and it’s all part of the overall picture, the overall score.
MADISON CARIO: You know as an arts leader, I’ve adopted a motto of always starting with ‘yes.’ Only recently have I begun to trace that practice back to my days as a lighting designer. Most of the time, I said yes to a choreographer, having no idea how I would make a look or evoke a feeling that they were describing happen – but I knew I’d figure it out. And I feel like that is what we were hearing from Tipton and Reitz – two people beginning with yes, sharing the decision-making and trusting that together a co-created truth will come to life and to light.
At the conclusion of this conversation, an audience member asks a question about how the light and movement work in terms of pacing and who leads or directs the transitions in Reitz’s and Tipton’s more interwoven dynamic. Let’s listen to Reitz reflect on how they communicate in real time, during a performance.
DANA REITZ: Well in this particular case, I kept giving Jennifer the cue about when to change to the next light. But we set it in the board, that it would be a 30-second fade. So, I knew about when I wanted 30 seconds to go to the next stage. So I have this is my silent , there's a trade secret. A trained eye gets to see it because I’m moving my hand so much, you know,
Some some technicians get very upset anyway. So I gave her a signal so that I can have control over I when I’m ready to leave something, a particular movement idea, particularly when I want to go on to the other but there are many pieces where I'll set a particular thing that has to be three minutes in this light and three minutes in the next one to three minutes with a 4o-second-favor that you're here and then I'm not in control - the clock does it. And in a way I do that at the beginning of a long evening piece because it makes me more aware of clock-time because I have my own sense of time. With adrenaline, it's a little faster so three minutes is actually two. So, I try and sync myself up with clock-time and then in other, later parts of the piece I'll have more control about when I’m finished with something and when I want to enter something else. So, it goes sort of back and forth through the development piece, we have different reasons together for why that would happen.
MADISON CARIO: We will turn now to a talk with Mark Stanley, the Resident Lighting Designer for New York City Ballet, who led a lighting workshop at the Pillow in 2008.
MARK STANLEY: I was an undergrad at William and Mary. And my freshman year there, a dance company that has been had been up here at Jacob's Pillow many times Nikolais Dance Theatre, came in and did a residency. And I was, you know, in the theatre department, and I was brought into hanging lights for the residency. And for a week, I was blown away by things on stage I'd never seen before in my life, I've just never seen people using projectors, as shin busters, and doing all sorts of artwork on spandex and stretched material and dancers moving in ways that in my limited Southern Virginia experience I'd never seen before. And my my mother likes to drag it out, even still, the letter that I wrote back, I was pre vet, I was a pre veterinary student at that time. And she brings out this letter and in it, you know, it just goes on and on about this amazing experience with Nikolais Dance Theater. And she said she knew at that point that veterinary medicine was out the window and that I was going to make a life in the theatre.
MADISON CARIO: I do wonder how many of us the arts captivated and then pivoted from a career in the sciences. And really, as someone who has straddled these worlds and frankly sees great similarities between them, it does not surprise me that, of the designers we heard from, two of the three mirror experiences not dissimilar from my own.
For me, this is a good reminder, having now been a presenter, an administrator, an artist and a designer, and having been initiated in the arts as an audience member, first and foremost, that this seemingly mysterious relationship between audience and art is not a mystery at all. If we want to know how to engage more engineers in the arts – perhaps ask your designers. If you want to understand what the audience sees, ask the folks whose job it is to direct their eyes.
Mark Stanley goes on in his talk to discuss his career with New York City Ballet. I’d like to share how he concluded his presentation because I feel it encapsulates the role that designers play. I can recall many productions that I worked on that began with a kernel of an idea and evolved into an entire world, rich with hidden meaning and historical references.
MARK STANLEY: So last and not least, to me, this sort of brings all the things back together I've been talking about today. In my role as a designer at City Ballet. This was a this music is the last music Stravinsky ever wrote. His widow gave it to a young composer that had been befriended Stravinsky during his life and asked him to create some music based on the themes create a piece based on the themes that are in that music. Stravinsky and Balanchine had a very unique collaboration in their lifetime. And so, what Peter did was take pieces of Balanchine choreography and created dance in the same way that the composer was creating music off of Stravinsky, Peter took Balanchine choreography and created a dance, with those scenes in it. We were talking about how best to create a world in which this piece existed. And I said well, let's project the music behind and light the dancer and costume them in a traditional Balanchine way. So, we melded the worlds together of sort of modern technology, and we scanned the music. I Photoshop, this sort of parchment effect into it. We projected in behind the dance, the costume designer came up with themes on sort of the standard of Balanchine black and white costume idea. We did sort of, again, standard Balanchine lighting on the dances strong, white light, that didn't change very much. And you have a world in which the dance exists. And it sort of embodies the essence of what New York City Ballet is all about. And for me what my career there has been.
MADISON CARIO: My hope is that this very brief journey into the perspectives and stories shared at the Pillow, can lend a bit of insight and perhaps intrigue into the very particular vantage points of designers.
So next time you are at the theater and the house lights go down, take a moment to think about all the people who move effortlessly in the dark to bring the dance to life. While these people are, by design, largely invisible to us as audience members; it is their craft, their vision, and their art that creates the holistic experience.
[Music begins, composed, and performed by Jess Meeker]
NORTON OWEN: That’s it for this episode of PillowVoices. Thank you for joining us today. On behalf of Jacob's Pillow, we look forward to sharing more dance with you through the films, essays, and podcasts at danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org, and of course through live experiences during our festival and throughout the year. Special thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts for helping launch this podcast series. Please subscribe to PillowVoices wherever you get your podcasts and visit us again soon, either online or onsite.