USA - Three lighting design students from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) recently had the opportunity to work with Elation Proteus Lucius and Fuze Wash Z350 moving head luminaires on Winter Works, a dance production featuring three original works by three professional choreographers from the UCSD dance faculty.
Produced yearly by the school’s Theatre & Dance Department, Winter Works specialises in dance repertory production. This year, Taylor Olson, Elba Emicente, and Vida Huang collaborated with choreographers Kara Mack, Ana María Álvarez, and Dr. Grace Shinhae Jun, respectively, on the performances. The productions, which involved a large cast of student performers, were showcased from 15-17 March at the 400-seat Mandell Weiss Forum on the UCSD campus.
Taylor Olson, an MFA lighting designer at UCSD, who lit the Kara Mack piece Open Your Eyes, contacted Elation product application and customer experience specialist, Nick Saiki, to discuss the project and eventually decided that Proteus Lucius and Fuze Wash Z350 fixtures would provide the versatile lighting needed for the diverse performances showcased in Winter Works. Aspect Lighting supplied the lights for the performances.
Working with choreographer and creative director Kara Mack, Open Your Eyes explored themes of strength and resilience inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr.'s final speech, given just a day before his assassination. “For me, the piece was about exploring how I would have responded to the
Taylor utilised the Proteus Lucius LED profile fixtures consistently throughout the performance as both a backlight and side light, experimenting with beam shaping and colour to enhance the choreography, including one representing the historic Jericho Road. “I used the Lucius as a back diagonal light with a sharp shutter cut on the floor to create a rectangle path then used the Fuze Wash as front light to fill the space,” she explained.
“I was interested in the warmer colours—ambers, yellows and reds—and was able to use all three colours in one by adjusting the iris and focus for a more diffused look.” She says it was an impactful scene and although she had never used a moving light with framing shutters before, having them in the Lucius proved to be very useful.
For ¡Azúcar!, an immersive dance piece choreographed by Ana María Álvarez, MFA lighting designer Elba Emicente explored “the essence of this grain's history and everything it represents in human culture, with the goal of carefully elevating each movement and moment through my lighting design”. One of the key elements of her design was the integration of three Proteus Lucius fixtures.
“These versatile Elation LED profile fixtures played a role in transforming three blue tarp scenic elements into real moon rocks with eroded formations. By strategic placement and selecting the perfect gobo, I was able to permeate each rock with a texture that spoke volumes and boosted the visual narrative of the piece.”
Elba also incorporated the Fuze Wash Z350 PAR moving heads into the piece as a main side light source, strategically placing them on either side of the voms.
Can We Kick It?, a high-energy hip hop performance with lighting design by Vida Huang was the final piece. All three incorporated the Elation lights. Taylor concludes, “With Winter Works, what really made the Elation lights so wonderful to have was how versatile the fixtures were in lighting three very diverse pieces.”
