Talking With Nick Kolin, LD Of Words At Fall For Dance Festival

Photo Ani Collier
 
One of the highlights of the 2014 Fall For Dance Festival was Words, a world premiere by Mark Morris and performed by the Mark Morris Dance Group on October 8 at New York City Center. Commissioned by Fall For Dance, this premiere—set to ten of Felix Mendelssohn’s 48 Songs Without Words and underscoring Morris’s magical sense of musicality—marked Nick Kolin’s debut as lighting designer for the company, with which he has been touring since 2011. Live Design catches up with Kolin, as he returned from a month-long tour taking Words to Scotland, Italy, and China.
 
Live Design: Ηοw did you go from assisting Clifton Taylor and others to  lighting Mark Morris?
 
Nick Kolin: I have been touring with the Mark Morris Dance Group since 2011, as lighting supervisor for both repertory shows and full evening works, including L’Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato in Madrid, which was recorded for Great Performances, and the recent Acis And Galatea, which had its New York premiere this summer at Lincoln Center.
 
When the new piece was due to premiere at Fall For Dance, the company thought it would be a good opportunity since I work with Clifton on the festival and am very familiar with what we are capable of. I would also have to take the piece out on tour almost immediately following the premiere so that would give me an advantage as well.
 
I believe my career path so far has been as varied as any other freelance designer, some design work mixed in with the occasional assisting job. I do have a particular interest in dance and have been doing some dance touring as well, notably with DanceBrazil, Restless Creature, and the Apollo Theatre’s Get On The Good Foot. I would say that, in particular, working with Clifton and Michael Chybowski has been quite influential on my work and career, Clifton because of his incredible craft and dedication to dance and his way of organizing his work that ensures the longevity of designs for pieces that are possibly decades old. Michael is also an extraordinary designer, and his history with the Mark Morris Dance Group—he has designed many of the company’s works—and his willingness to share his time and advice to help me navigate the company’s many complex works has been invaluable. They are also both dedicated teachers to whom I can always turn if I have a question or need advice about a project.
 
Photo Ani Collier
 
LD: What was the design intent in the  lighting for Mark Morris?
 
NK: From the music and choreography and costumes, designed by the wonderful Maile Okamura, also a company dancer, I thought the work had a very pastoral feel to it, something that is out in nature and can shift moods and time of day, depending on the feel of the music and choreography for each section. There is also a very wide range of emotion in the choreography of the different sections, from playful and happy to melancholy and tragic, which gave me many ideas to explore when creating the lighting for the piece.
 
The jumping off point for me was “Spring Song,” which is the most familiar piece within Songs Without Words. I wanted this piece to feel very playful and bright, with textured light and an open background with brightly lit bodies, as if the dancers are running through a field and forest in bright daytime. The painting Springtime by the artist Pierre-Auguste Cot was a very early inspiration and influenced my initial thinking for the color palette of the piece.
 
From there, it was about exploring and responding to the moods of the other pieces. Two of the sections are rhythmic barcaroles—“Venetian Gondola Songs”—which felt very cool and close to water. Other sections had a more tragic and intimate feeling about them, prompting the addition of a warmer golden hue, giving the feeling of a sunset glow at the end of the day.
 

Lighting Words

 
Photo Ani Collier
 
It was also very important to me that the sections of Words all worked together in a way that makes it feel like one continuous dance. I hoped that being fairly restrained in terms of color palette, especially with the background, where I used only a primary green and primary blue and mixed those colors depending on the section, would achieve that. Plus, the choreographed transitions helped in this respect. There was a small dancer-held curtain that was used as a theatrical device to bring dancers on and off stage, which kept things moving; the stage was rarely empty between sections.
 
Another challenge in the design for this work is that it was choreographed to be flexible in terms of the number of dancers and potentially the composition of the different sections. There is a set order, but it has the potential to be excerpted or shifted should the situation warrant. It also premiered with 16 dancers but has been often performed with only eight. So, in this way, I worked to keep the cueing very simple and flexible as well to shift and expand/contract as needed.
 
Other than that, I would say that my ultimate goal is to present the dancers in the most beautiful way possible. They are the stars of the show, and everything I do is in support of them and the work.
 
LD: Did you feel any challenges working within the rep plot at Fall For Dance in terms of the premiere?
 
NK: One of Clifton’s goals with the festival is to try and let visiting companies have the resources they might have for their own home seasons. It is, of course, not always possible, but in this case, I was able to recreate most of the tools I usually have from the Mark Morris Dance Group repertory plot using the conventional repertory systems and moving light specials, and Clifton was very generous in letting me have the other specials that I did want to add.
 
Otherwise, the main challenge for me was time. Due to the nature of the festival’s schedule, I had about two hours with dancers on stage to write and polish the cues for the 24-minute-long work. Because of this, I needed to have a very good idea of what I wanted each section to look like before I walked in the door.
 
Photo Ani Collier
 
LD: Does choice of fixtures and color for the piece tie in to the musicality of the  choreography?
 
NK: My choice of fixtures rests primarily on the company repertory plot that has been developed over the years. I would consider it a fairly standard touring dance repertory plot, primarily ETC Source Four ellipsoidals for boom and high side-light, Fresnels for backlight, PAR64 MFLs used as diagonal backs, a cyc/bounce setup, and piece-specific specials as needed. The company’s repertory has traditionally been all fixed focus instruments. For the premiere, I was able to use the moving lights in the Fall For Dance Repertory to create some of the extra systems and specials needed for the work. 
 
In developing the color palette for the piece, the plot is most flexible in the low boom color and the cyc color. In this case, I chose to support the pastoral feeling of the music and choreography with the blue and green cyc, and opted for flexibility in the low side-lighting with a mix of cool and warm tints, including Lee 203 Quarter CTB, Lee 151 Gold Tint—doubled up, this color really helped warm up the dancers’ bodies in many sections—and Lee 136 Pale Lavender, which is also used as a repertory color in the front and high side systems. I also had high booms in clear and Lee 161 Slate Blue, as well as a dark blue high side—Lee 132 Medium Blue—and template high side. This gave me a range of options, and all worked together to help realize the piece.
 
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