Dance Light

Twenty days in, first post of the New Year. I’m back in the theatre, taking rehearsal pictures; and a short story about quick turn-around. More after the jump…

Every year the School does a special project called “Dance/Light”. Almost entirely student-run, it’s a collaborative project between the actors, lighting designers, costume & sound production. Basically, the students choose their own groups, then plan and choreograph their own dance pieces. Each group gets their own lighting designer, and about three weeks to pull it all together. The result is always something special, even to a Philistine like me who normally wouldn’t go within a 100 miles of such a thing.

Tuesday & Wednesday of this week were the Tech rehearsals, 6:30 to 11:00pm. You gotta believe how much that sucks, having worked a full day on top of it. But all I’ve got to do is sit there pressing a shutter-release; I’m not the one flying across the stage doing ten-foot dance leaps (something, I’m sure, we’ll all rather grateful for).

Two days, 2000 pictures – and that’s just the keepers. Granted; a lot of those aren’t what I’d call “photographs” – the directors, costume & lighting designers all have (I’ve found) funny ideas when it comes to what they want in their portfolios. So when I shoot things like this I end up keeping a lot of images I’d ordinarily… not.

But after the first night I also submitted about 12 of the choicer captures, four of which were turned into posters the next day. It’s something that still freaks me out a little – just how freak’en fast we can push the ones, not to mention the zeros. Shoot, edit, email. Go make a sandwich. Come back to find advertising.

Ok, granted; it’s not real advertising. It’s Kinkos. It’s just going to be used on campus. But the scope doesn’t  matter quite so much to me as the principle of the thing. Twenty-four hours after I heard that “click”, I’m looking a small group of people looking at the poster and talking about seeing the show. And I’ve just about never lived in a world where that wasn’t the case. It’s just… odd.

Speaking of real advertising; the calendar I mention at the end of this post is a go. We start the first of three days of shooting this weekend. Man, if you thought my last recap was wordy…. Well, I can’t yet imagine what nonsense I’ll bang out about this. You have been warned.

In the mean time; here are the other three finished pieces.

End of line.