31 Days of Plots: Ode at Alvin Ailey

To reflect on the creative, innovative moments of 2020 and to welcome the hope that the New Year brings, Live Design is conducting 31 Days Of Plots. Every day during the month of December 2020, we will highlight a different lighting design, from across theatre, concert tours, corporate events, and more.

KOI-USA Award-winning lighting designer Brandon Stirling Baker is shortlisted for Live Design's 2020 Design Achievement Awards for his work on Ode, a dance tribute to victims of gun violence. The music is organized into three “stanzas” or three chapters, which Stirling echoed with three distinct chapters of light that represent the world of the living, the world of those no longer with us, and a dream-like quality that is somewhere in-between. The lighting workhorse was the Martin Mac Viper Performance fixture (from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater rep plot), lighting directly through the flower ceiling and special-added ETC Source Four LUSTR2 profiles on 6' Rover booms that uplight the painted scenery from offstage in the second and third wing. To effectively balance the clarity of color across the vibrant, high-painted flowers, bare-chested skin tones of the male cast, and full-body dresses of the female cast, Baker created a "white light" using Lee 710 and Lee 712, in combination with the LUSTR2, to carefully shift the saturation in a way that connects the constellation of flowers above and the dancers below. Read more about the lighting design for Ode.

Check out other plots from the 31 Days here, and stay tuned for more over the next 30 days.