BAM’s Next Wave Festival presented the New York City premiere of A Rite, an exhiliarating collaboration by choreographer Bill T. Jones of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Anne Bogart of SITI Company. The piece was commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as part of a celebration of the 100th anniversary of Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring in Paris 1913 (when it caused riots at the theatre).
Lighting designer Robert Wierzel, who has worked with Jones for decades, notes that his lighting for the piece is “very sparse yet theatrical, with the same raw energy in the lighting as in the music.” And the same level of energy was felt in the Howard Gilman Opera House at BAM on opening night, where it was greeted with a standing ovation.
As the stage was bare save for a few props such as stools and a piano, Wierzel’s lighting was very visible, framing the performance area with kinetic boundaries and a very contemporary sensibility. “James Schutte’s set was stripped way back with just a curtain cut like ribbons upstage and hung in a modern art way. The lighting was as forceful and aggressive as called for in each section,” notes Wierzel, who was out of town for the opening at BAM but knew the work was in the capable hands of lighting supervisor Laura Bickford. The ribbons of curtain upstage create a forceful final effect as the lighting creates a Muybridge-life effect of a man running across the stage.
Stravinsky’s music was so revolutionary in 1913, the idea here could be that it ushered in a new period in European history, as evoked by WWI, the jazz age, the popularity of cinema, and the beginnings of modernism in the 20th century. A solider returns from war but seems shell shocked by the experience, a female musicologist tries to explain the patterns in The Rite Of Spring but seems lost in its cacophony. To light a cavalcade of movement, Wierzel added a bar of ETC Source Four Pars upstage, with the fixtures alternately focused upstage and downstage. “They were not used together,” he points out, “but for two different looks, simple gestures that changed the visual impact of the space.”
He also used sidelight to etch out the performers (a mix of dancers and actors) in the space, with Source Four elliposidals. Top light was added to help delineate boxes drawn with tape on the floor, with additional Source Fours from above as columns of light, fracturing the space yet pulling it together. Other than Lee 201 there is no color in the light, adding to the sparseness of the light, which in effect is its strength. “The boxes on the floor are asymmetrical geometric shapes that echo the lack of rational in the music,” adds Wierzel. “It is a very articulated design.”