There seems to be a dance show going on at Northwestern every week in the spring. All of which are full of incredible choreography complimented with stunning lights. Sophia Casa takes a step behind the tech table to hear from the students letting there be light at these various shows.
Like hundreds of Northwestern students every year, Communication sophomore Claude Wei Zhang attended Refusionshaka. But it wasn’t the dancing or the drumming that was their highlight of that night.
CLAUDE WEI ZHANG: I was blown away, um, at what is possible, um, with dance lighting because at my school, we did it at a very limited scale. So from that moment, I just knew it was something that I really wanted to be a part of.
And that’s exactly what they did. Zhang is now a part of the small but mighty group of lighting designers who utilize their talents on the campus’ many dance shows.
A majority of the lighting design opportunities at Northwestern are through student theatre which recruits through newsletters, outreach emails, and regular social connections. And by and large, it’s not much different for dance. Alex Yang is a fourth-year in the school of communication who spent his senior spring designing 4 shows.
ALEX YANG: When you make yourself known to the theater community, you also kind of make yourself known to the dance people, there’s connections there, and then they reach out to all the lighting designers they know.
However, theatre and dance shows do diverge in a lot of ways. While both incorporate movement and lights, how those pieces are put together varies across the performances as Olivia Czyz, a third year in Mccormick and The School of Communication notes.
OLIVIA CZYZ: dance show lighting has to kind of a lot more specifically visually compliment kind of what’s happening where like theater lighting, a lot of the time your goal is enhancing the storyline and the plot line running through.
Yang, like Czyz and Zhang, designs for theatre as well as dance. With spring shows for groups like Boomshaka and Fusion he’s able to tap into different areas of design as well as his own personal experiences.
YANG: One of the philosophies of design that I’m really diving into is designing with impulse. And I find that your impulse really comes through movement and through dance. In fact, I found that to be really connected to how I design dance shows. So being able to hone in on that impulse through, like, my experience as a dancer really helps me know what they want in these different pieces, in these different choreographies.
And unlike student theatre with weeks of pre-production meetings, dance shows operate on a faster timeline meaning designers typically come into the shows with their cues set before fine-tuning with the dancers in the actual space. It can be daunting to do this given the sheer number of pieces and the size of these groups, but luckily Yang has people to lean on.
YANG: there is a network of lighting designers and we all talk to each other about what equipment we each need for each of our shows. We have to communicate that for, um, like, splitting equipment needs. But also, like, if we have any problems that we have. So there’s a lot of different ideas floating around, and also people help each other out.
This group includes Zhang and Czyz. The latter found this support system incredibly helpful in figuring out what to set her pay rate as for dance lighting. This is what makes dance shows such a unique and valuable opportunity for emerging lighting designers as it’s one of the only opportunities for them to get paid for their work on campus.
CZYZ: I was told as a freshman by a lighting designer professor, when you’re deciding what to work on, you should always be thinking, does it have at least two out of the three of are you fulfilled and excited about what you’re doing? Are the people good? And is the money good? And so when it comes to student theater, the money is already not there. To keep going with a lot of student theater, you kind of have to be a lot more excited about those two. The money in dance – sometimes when things get trickier, things get harder, it is nice to know I’m getting financially compensated for my time.
And while the money is nice; Yang, Czyz, and Zhang all agree that it’s not about that. It’s about the joy and creativity that comes from bringing together their designs with the choreography of their peers. Here’s Zhang.
ZHANG: But what I love about dance so much is that I feel like the feeling of dance is felt through movement, felt through the music and is felt through the lighting. It doesn’t, I feel like it doesn’t necessarily need a word to it.
So next time you’re at a friend’s dance show, take a second glance over your program and say a thank you to the designers lighting up the stage.
For WNUR News, I’m Sophia Casa
