The Fall For Dance was an incredible experience- it portrayed different types of dances, each with their own distinguished movements, music, and lighting. Lighting played an extremely important role in each of the dances, particularly in correspondence with the music. Vincent Mantsoe’s “Gula”, for example, was characterized by sounds often found in nature. The lighting went hand in hand with that aspect due to the earthy tones shown. The Dorrance Dance Company did something similar, whereas faster paced music often played when the stage was brightly lit or colorful. The opposite applied as well; slower music with lower notes was played when darker colors or deeper tones were used.
On another note, the Miami City Ballet and Trisha Brown Company used lighting a bit differently. The lighting remained uniform throughout the Trisha Brown Company’s performance, but it emphasized the sad, almost remorseful feeling of the dance. From the deep red tone to the shadows shaping the dancers’ faces, lighting accentuated the message of the dance extremely well. The Miami City Ballet, on the other hand, utilized lighting mainly through shadows. When there were multiple dancers on the stage, the shadows were made bigger, and portrayed different rows of dancers as one unit each. They also used lighting to really get the audience to focus on a single dancer on stage through spotlights. Although the ways in which the four companies used lighting differed, overall, lighting was essential to making the Fall For Dance as amazing as it was.
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