Recently engaged, scenic designer Libby Stadstad and lighting designer Brandon Stirling Baker, a 2019 KOI-USA Award winner, designed their first production together, Jamar Robert’s Ode for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre at New York City Center. The December 2019 world premiere of this 17-minute piece featured scenic design by Stadstad and lighting by Baker. A meditation on the beauty and fragility of life in a time of growing gun violence, Ode is set to Don Pullen’s 1975 solo piano improvisation “Suite (Sweet) Malcolm (Part 1 Memories and Gunshots).” Live Design goes behind the scenes with the designers to learn more about their work.
Live Design: What was your educational/career path to date?
Brandon Stirling Baker: I grew up in Los Angeles, California surrounded by all areas of the arts. Studied at the California Institute of the Arts and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, Scotland. Two days after graduation, I moved to New York. I spent many years working as an assistant/associate on Broadway and touring internationally as a lighting supervisor for ballet and modern dance companies. In 2010, after completing the Hemsley Lighting Internship, I discovered an incredible community of like-minded artists, composers, and choreographers that were all eager to make a difference in this art form. These collaborations developed into a life-changing career working with Justin Peck, Jamar Roberts, Savion Glover, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Sufjan Stevens, and many others. In 2018, I was appointed lighting director and lighting designer of the Boston Ballet. This residency has been a dream come true for many reasons, but most importantly, has provided me with a creative home that allows for many other exciting projects internationally.
Libby Stadstad: Growing up in the Midwest allowed me to be inspired by day-to-day life. I had a wonderfully imaginative childhood in St. Paul, Minnesota, surrounded by inspiring people who valued history, the arts, and creative exploration. I spent many days at the Walker Art Center, Children’s Theatre of Minneapolis, and the Minnesota Historical Society. My formal training began at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, and I completed my MFA in scenic design at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Immediately after college, I worked at the Williamstown Theater Festival and developed long-term connections with directors and designers. These connections brought me to New York to work as an assistant and associate on Broadway, national tours, and large-scale immersive instillations. In 2018, I worked as an adjunct professor in scenic design for Ramapo College and have developed my own career as a designer for musical theater working extensively with director Joe Barros. As another medium to connect with people, I have recently expanded my work in film and television as an assistant art director for TV shows on the CBS and CW networks. In 2019, I made my scenic design debut with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process series.
photo by Robert Altman
Live Design: Can you talk about designing Ode, your first production where you collaborated as lighting and scenic designer?
BSB: Ode was my third collaboration with choreographer Jamar Roberts and my first official collaboration with Libby as scenic designer. In our everyday lives at home, Libby and I always find inspiration in each other’s creative projects, so working together in a professional setting was an easy transition. I knew from the beginning that this ballet had to visually represent a new chapter for Jamar as a newly appointed resident choreographer, but most importantly, we had to provide a unique world for this dance to live in. I have been waiting many years for an opportunity to work with Libby as scenic designer. Libby’s background in pattern making, theatre design, and incredible sense of color provided us with the final ingredients and most importantly a unique point of view.
LS: Over the past five years, I have been exposed to nearly every form of dance in New York. My background is mostly in theatre but I’ve always admired dance as an art form. Seeing companies like New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Mark Morris, Jessica Lang, Michelle Dorrance, and of course, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has been extremely exciting. When Jamar reached out to me, it was clear that this was a unique opportunity. Jamar expressed how the increase in gun violence over the recent years has affected him personally and that this was an opportunity to give a flower to the victims of gun violence as a message of hope.
The conversations began with how we could introduce a large quantity of flowers onto the main stage at New York City Center. I built a scale model of City Center, which allowed us to explore shape and form of potential designs to see how it would affect both the dancer and the audience. Some of our early ideas included hanging flowers on vines throughout the space, dimensional flowers framing the stage, and traditional painted backdrops. Ultimately, we wanted a design that was more integrated with the dancer and whose shape evoked a feeling of action. We achieved this through a combination of a traditional painted drop techniques, playing with scale of flowers and hanging the drop on an extreme angle. The entire process was deeply collaborative and always inspired by Jamar Robert’s important message of hope.
Working together with Brandon allowed me to consider the presence of lighting from the very beginning of the design process. We were able to take fabric samples back home and see first-hand how the design interacts with light. This also gave us a unique edge going into tech for this project with a pre-established vocabulary.
LD: How do you design for dance, in that the stage pretty much has to be left clear for the movement, except if...
LS: Designing for dance is one of the most unique and freeing experiences that I have encountered in my early career. We are given permission to simply respond to the music and choreography without a traditional script, but encouraged to create something with true meaning. This means that every gesture we make is astronomically more important. For this ballet, Jamar and I discussed exactly how much of the stage was required to achieve the choreography but also change the classic repertory look of what is typically designed at Ailey. For this production, Jamar had three dedicated panels of dance space and the upstage fourth wing was dedicated for scenery.
LD: For Ode, what inspired you to do the bright floral backdrop?
LS: The typical approach to this subject would be to create a stark, threatening space that is associated with the horrors of gun violence. Instead, when Jamar spoke of bringing hope to those affected, we decided to work in total opposition to both the music score and the subject matter. This created an intriguing and unique experience for the audience. The colors and the vivid nature of the drop were inspired by many different sources including renaissance paintings, vintage textile patterns, installation artists, and the New York flower district.
LD: How exactly was it designed, and how/where was it constructed?
LS: The drop was overseen by Joe Forbes and Susan Jackson at Scenic Art Studios in Newburgh, New York. The frame for the drop was constructed by Prop & Paint studio.
The drop is made of over 300 handmade custom flowers and leaves individually attached to a 40'x 32' scenic netting. All of the muslin flowers are painted with dye rather than traditional scenic paint in order to allow for the maximum amount of translucency for each of the flowers. Each floral design was mass-produced by creating jigs of several different shapes and sizes that were then individually painted with a resistance stamp so that they could create a large quantity for us to arrange.
LD: What inspires or informs your design process for a world premiere like this?
BSB: A major inspiration for this work was the music by Don Pullen (Sweet Suite Malcom). The music score is organized into three “stanzas” or three chapters. The piece begins with a minimalist quality and eventually takes us on a wild, abstract journey of percussive piano, only to return again to the quiet melody at the very end. It was important to me that the lighting echo this structure in all of its qualities (color, direction, intensity) and most importantly, to control the way we view and understand the ceiling of flowers. This blend of design ideas allowed me to create 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.
LD: What are your main lighting fixtures here? Do you interact with Al Crawford when designing for Ailey?
BSB: The workhorse of the lighting for this ballet was created with Martin Mac Viper Performance lighting fixtures (from the Ailey 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. I was in close contact with Al Crawford (Ailey lighting director) and Roya Abab (Ailey associate lighting director) very early on to discuss the specific lighting needs of this ballet. When designing for a company like AAADT, it is essential that all of your design ideas are efficient, tour-friendly, and cost-effective.
LD: Use of color and movement in this piece? Does it change much when the cast is female rather than the bare torso men, who look so nicely sculpted by the light?
BSB: In all of my work, the presence of color is one of my favorite details to consider. I always feel that I need to earn the right to use color. It is never a simple decision but always a carefully considered choice. For this ballet, I spent a great amount of time testing color on the vibrant hand-painted flowers. The costume design by Jamar Roberts is drastically different depending on which cast is performing on any given night (one cast is all men and one cast is all women). I had to find a common ground of color that would work well for bare-chested skin tones and for the women’s full body dress.
This clarity of color was created by using Lee 710 and Lee 712 as the ‘white light.’ This pale lavender color palette along with the flexibility of color in the ETC LUSTR2 allowed me to carefully shift the saturation in a way that connects the constellation of flowers above and the dancers below.
LD: Where do you see yourself in five years design-wise?
LS: I hope to find more design opportunities that are equally as meaningful and impactful as the work we have created here with Ode. Art with a message is always the ultimate goal, and I see myself finding more ways to do exactly that in my future, whether it be in theater, dance, film, or television.
BSB: I am very fortunate to have a busy and creative life in the world of ballet. My goal is to continue working with positive, like-minded artists in this community that are truly making a difference and continue learning from the many directors, designers, playwrights, choreographers, and composers that have come before us.