Working with the Merce Cunningham Dance Co.

Good Monday to you all,
As some of you know I work doing lighting, sound and technical support for theater and this week I was working on a performance by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College. Merce Cunningham started choreographing modern dance in the early forty's and is considered by some to be greatest living modern Dance choreographer. It was great to see him working with the dancers and sitting offstage during the performances in his wheelchair. He is now 88, but the love of dance is still very much alive in him. At points he would lift himself up off his wheelchair and dance a little with a smile on his face.


The dancers where AGMA Union and under their contract there wasn't any photography allowed so I only got a few photos and I didn't take any of dancers in a way that they could be recognized.

Backstage during the show.

Backstage during the show as well.

One more backstage shot.

I was playing around with my camera and light (I seem to do that a lot) and used a string of blue rope lights that where used to light the up stage crossover to make this image.

Blue rope light aka "Ethereal Blue"

This shot is of the boom lights. Boom lights are lights mounted horizontally on vertical pipes on the sides of the stage used to light the sides of the dancers. Usually there are three lights on a pipe one at about shin hight, one around four feet and one around six to nine feet. The shins are used to light only the dancers and are cut off the floor, it makes the dancers appear to float in space, the Mids help to define the shape of the body and give it depth and the Head Highs do much the same as the Mids but with a different effect because they are pointing down to as much as a thirty degree angle.

Inversed boom lights.

After seeing the dancing in this show I can't wait to get out and dance soon.
I hope you all got a chance to enjoy the wonderful weather we had this past week, high eighty's and bright sun, fall colors... Good stuff. I was stuck in the theater for most of it, but I did get a little sun yesterday at Ciderfest. More about Ciderfest soon. Enjoy life,
~will