Text, Dance, And Light

Photo Robert Altman

Not all dancers talk as they move, but Stephen Petronio learned from one of the best. He was the first male dancer in the Trisha Brown Dance Company (1979-1986) and noticed that she often spoke while dancing; he also watched enviously as the women in the company performed Brown’s Glacial Decoy, which did not have room for a man. More than 30 years later, as part of his Bloodlines project, in which he plans to add works by major contemporary choreographers to his repertory, Petronio asked Trisha Brown veterans Diane Madden and Lisa Kraus to set the 1979 Glacial Decoy on his company, which performed it in March 2016 at The Joyce Theatre in New York City, after premiering it in Chicago last October.

The original lighting for the Glacial Decoy, which had iconic sets, featuring projected photographs, and costumes by Robert Rauschenberg, was by Beverly Emmons. Petronio’s resident lighting designer Ken Tabachnick notes that Emmons “came in to look at stage rehearsals at The Joyce and relit the piece.” Lighting supervisor Joe Doran had laid out the plot after conversations with Emmons.

Photo Robert Altman

“I toured with the piece in the early ‘80s after working as Beverly’s assistant,” recalls Tabachnick. “My recollection of the instrumentation was that we usually used 2k Fresnels for the backlight and standard ellipsoidals for high-side and head-high boom lighting. At The Joyce, the backlight was ETC PAR strips, which we augmented with a third set in order to have coverage and make sure we were lighting downstage of the screens in Glacial Decoy. The high-side lights and booms were the standard Joyce instrumentation, which is all ETC Source Fours. The color was exactly the same as I remember it from when I toured it.”

Tabachnick notes that one of the important goals was to match the tonality of the lighting to the color of the slides. “As the Trisha Brown Company has changed projector technology, this is a question that has arisen,” he says. “Beverly did not, to my knowledge, change any colors for this run, but she and I had a very interesting conversation about it in the context of the developing ubiquity of LED-sourced fixtures.”

Photo Robert Altman

“The projectors were very tricky,” explains Doran, noting his team had very specific parameters to make the projection work. “Glacial Decoy required rear projection, and The Joyce is a fairly shallow stage.” The projectors used were Panasonic PT-DZ770K—7,000-lumen, 1,920x1,200 resolution, single-chip DLP units—with the Panasonic 0.38 Ultra Short Lens rented by New City Video and Staging on Canal Street. “Jack Young and Nelson Otero were extremely helpful in figuring out the photometrics,” adds Duran.

The world premiere on the program was Big Daddy (Deluxe), a work in progress for Petronio; this is the piece in which he speaks about his father. “He has not yet decided if it is dance/theatre, dance with text, or what,” says Tabachnick, who lit this piece. “He originally danced it as a solo while talking, a la Trisha Brown’s accumulation dances. Then he started adding a single dancer, then another, and then he got injured and couldn’t dance. So this version is a response to trying to find a medium that works without him dancing.”

Planning The Lighting Design

Photo Robert Altman

Tabachnick explains that the original concept for the lighting was clear, white presentational lighting on Petronio while he talks, and vivid color on the dancers, “marking a dream world or referential space clearly different from the text and everything we have ever done,” says the LD. “When we put that on stage, we both hated it and reverted to a simplistic approach. Again, the parts with Stephen talking are designed to be very traditional presentational, hence the spots. The rest is designed to be a generic dance space. The dance cues are all the same except for the transitional opening and moment before the end where Stephen joins the dancers USC.”

Middlesex George, the third piece on the program, dates from 1990, and is lit exactly as it was originally except for using The Joyce’s ETC Source Fours instead of the standard incandescent ellipsoidals of 25 years ago. “It is only 12 downlights and eight shins in total, plus the smoke,” notes Tabachnick. “The smoke has changed over the years as OSHA, and other standards have forced changes to the composition and types of smoke acceptable on the stage. This year, like the original smoke cookies of 25 years ago, we were able to achieve the original concept, which was to ‘physicalize’ the choreographic zones of the dance, which takes place totally on the centerline and the two quarter-lines.” 

Photo Yi-Chun Wu

Tabachnick uses The Joyce rep plot but modifies it as needed. “Each year, the amount of modification varies based on the individual dances we are doing. Stephen’s plot is quite malleable depending on the rep each year and is not rooted in a core set of systems, though I generally choose from a core set of systems I like,” he explains.

“This year, we added a third set of ETC PAR strips for the backlight, as I noted above. The Joyce only has two sets and they never cover the whole stage. So Glacial Decoy this year gave us a good opportunity to look at adding a third set, which was very successful. Other than the projector for Glacial Decoy, the only other changes, except for breaking some twofers, was to swap out barrels, though I think The Joyce already had them, on the downlights from 36° to 50°. We also added irises—again in house equipment, I believe—to a good number of lights since the Middlesex George downlights and the Big Daddy (Deluxe) specials were size-critical.”

Working In Tandem

There is a deep comfort level between the choreographer and lighting designer based on the fact that they have been working together for more than 30 years. They have developed a very close and supportive working relationship that is rooted in their common interests and understandings of how each other thinks. “Generally, Stephen tells me long in advance what the issues he is considering or working with are for a piece,” notes Tabachnick. “Since his work is never directly attributable to the idea but is metaphorically related or incited by his idea, this serves really as a broad access point for me into understanding what he is working with.” 

Tabachnick generally drops into rehearsal about six to eight weeks in advance of the premiere, when Petronio, as he notes, “is usually in the midst of his biggest struggle. At this point, he usually has established the vocabulary and is in the process of structuring and building the piece. This is an interactive process with the dancers. So I get to see both what he has made up until that point and watch him ‘struggle’ with whatever is the thing he is working on at that point. Wherever he is at this point, however, the underlying choreographic structure or direction is completely clear to me, and I can very quickly offer him a number of suggestions of how to support this, or comment on it, or contrast to it in light, and sometimes supported by visuals. We kick around the broad direction and contexts, and then we go our separate ways. This will form the basics of the plot we hand in, since plots are due at The Joyce one month in advance of the premiere.” 

Photo Yi-Chun Wu

Tabachnick then checks in with Petronio periodically about how it is going after that without dropping by rehearsal. “He always sends me updates of the music, which is generally commissioned,” explains the LD. “The week before or two weeks before our premiere, I will go to rehearsal three times: the first time to see the ‘finished’ piece; the second time to lay out the cues; the third time to refine them and, often, review the placements with the stage manager. After each of these rehearsals, Stephen and I meet to discuss what I am thinking and how he is feeling. Overall, he is very, very hands-off about telling me what to do or how to light it, other than to react to the broad sketch I describe to him.”

Photo Yi-Chun Wu

After these rehearsals, Tabachnick checks in with Doran about any changes necessary to the light plot and to review focus with him. “We load in on Monday. Joe focuses the plot, and I am always there to oversee and focus specials or new systems for the new piece,” he says. “Either that afternoon or that evening, Stephen will space the new piece on stage with dancers. I will work lighting the piece while they space. He then runs the piece, and we run the cues. He and I check in to make sure there are no big issues, like there were this year with Big Daddy (Deluxe), when we both hated it. The next morning, the day of the premiere, Stephen will come late morning, and I will walk him through the cues. I will have worked that morning to adjust, or as in the case of Big Daddy (Deluxe) this year, relight the piece. After lunch, there is a photo call and then a full run in costume. The show opens that night. He and I check in after the dress and first performance to see if there are any tweaks needed.”

Photo Robert Altman

For Tabachnick, “the long and short of all of this, is that we have such an understanding of each other and how we work that we have pretty minimal communication around the lighting and more of our discussion is about choreographic issues, audience perception issues, and structure.”

Next up for Petronio is Ally, a collaboration with Janine Antoni and Anna Halperin, that is installation, exhibit, and performance at the Fabric Museum in Philadelphia. It premiered this month and runs through July. The company then has performances in Pittsburgh in May, where they perform the Bloodlines’ Rainforest from Merce Cunningham along with two Petronio pieces, and at American Dance Festival in June, when they are performing both Bloodlines dances in Petronio’s repertory to date: Rainforest and Trisha Brown’s Glacial Decoy. It’s great to see these pieces preserved and passed on to the next generation, with the original lighting design intact, albeit updated.

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