Live Design's fifth annual 31 Days Of Plots features one production per day during the month of December 2022, highlighting a different lighting design, from across theatre, concert tours, corporate events, live for broadcast, and more, as we wind down 2022 and head toward the new year.
Benjamin Millepied's "Be Here Now" for L.A. Dance Project was performed using a custom floor design and three-sided projection screens at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris in October, with lighting by Clifton Taylor.
"The celebrated artist Barbara Kruger, who is currently having retrospectives at MOMA in NY and at the Arsenale in Venice, designed the projections and scenery for Benjamin Millepied's masterwork abstract ballet," says Taylor. "The challenge for me was how to create lighting for a full-evening piece with no traditional sidelight positions and dancers using the stage from screen to screen. I came up with several strategies for overcoming these challenges: First, I used first-electric-mounted remote controlled Robe followspots to steepen the FS angle and minimize shadows. Second, I employed a rig that was 90% moving lights to be able to control every moment of the lighting in terms of color and distribution. And thirdly, I used LDDE NanoPix Slim FR 1440s to run along the bottom of all three screens. They are beautiful, very short units that allowed a very thin, but also very crisp and bright, line of light at the bottom of each screen. This cleaned up the edges between the raked floor and the screens enormously and allowed me to sometimes work with the same color of the projections and sometimes work in color contrasts."
"Be Here Now," Théatre du Châtelet, Paris
Credits:
Choreography and Costume Design by Benjamin Millepied
Scenery and Projections by Barbara Kruger
Lighting by Clifton Taylor
Assistant Lighting Designer: Emmanuel Delgado
For the Châtelet Team: Camille LaBelle leads an amazing group of artisans, programmers and technicians at this most capable theater. Always a pleasure to be there.
For L.A. Dance Project: Nathan Shreeve-Moon is the director of production doing Herculean work of premiering major works like this for the company outside their home turf. Really incredible.
Gear List:
20 ETC Source Four Zoom 25°-50°
30 ETC Source Four 26° LED•Lustr2
40 ETC Source Four 36° LED•Lustr2
29 High End Systems SolaFrame 3000
21 Elation Rayzor 760
8 Claypaky Sharpy Wash 330
2 Robe Robin Esprite
28 LDDE NanoPix Slim FR 1440