LIGHTING DESIGNER

Barb Thompson is a Lighting Designer by trade, and at heart, who also doubles as Production Manager for Dance Alloy in Pittsburgh, PA. Having been introduced to the joys of lighting during a rather long but enjoyable period of her life known as college at Carnegie Mellon, she now pursues a career in dance; or more specifically, lighting for dance.
Dance Alloy
Dance Alloy is Pittsburgh's professional contemporary dance company. Now celebrating its 25th anniversary season, the company also runs a school, which offers a variety of classes daily. The Alloy travels extensively, nationally and internationally and locally, the company makes its performance home at Pittsburgh's Byham Theatre, performing several seasons there a year.
Travels
The Alloy specializes in projects and choreography created with, and explored with, other dance artists from different cultures. In 1998, the company traveled to St. Thomas to create a piece about ethnic diversity and immigration problems facing those in the US Virgin Islands (as well as many communities throughout this country and abroad). Working with composer and Calypso King Black Stalin, Mark Taylor, artistic director of Dance Alloy, created the evening length work called Roots/Crossroutes. Eight songs were composed for the collaboration, and are available on CD from the University of the Virgin Islands. Other on-site collaborations have included a piece created to commemorate the 25th and 30th anniversaries of the Kent State shootings, and a celebration for Frostburg State University's 100th anniversary. In 1997 the company was in residence on the Big Island in Hawaii to create a piece based on the Hawaiian creation chants with Michael Pang's Halau Hula Ka No`eau.
Something More
At the Alloy, Barb enjoys a fulfilling, artistic collaboration with the company's artistic director, Mark Taylor. Mark is a certified practitioner of Body-Mind Centering®, and his work and movement philosophy utilizes this understanding of the body's form and function. All movement starts from a very internal point, even taking it all the way down to a cellular level. Barb has been exploring the physical and emotional effect of the external influence of light on the body. A mood must be set to assist the audience with understanding the scene or movement, but the overall presentation is changed in seemingly minute ways, depending on how the dancer feels in the environment prepared for him or her. Our bodies react to light and color and temperature in many ways, some based on a learned pattern, others seemingly almost primeval in origin. If the dancer is given the freedom to explore and understand reaction to these stimuli, the overall movement quality of the work is affected in a positive manner. The dancer is free to create and experience the movement from the inside out. Mark and Barb have also experimented with manipulating the dancers movements and mood with lighting effects, when the dancers have not been made aware of the plan for the desired reaction.
	"We don't see enough of the Dance Alloy, Pittsburgh's antidote for the humdrum and the mundane." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Ballet
Barb also works with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre. She finds working with the company's artistic director, Terry Orr, exciting and rejuvenating because Mr. Orr has an amazingly detailed and quick response to information. His abilities to process the visual aspects of a performance are immediate and precise. Barb initially worked with Mr. Orr when she designed the lights for their new production of Swan Lake. This season, Barb will be designing the company's annual confection, The Nutcracker. Barb has long enjoyed The Nutcracker, having worked for several seasons with Edward Villella's Miami City Ballet during their holiday run in Florida. What better place to be then south Florida during November, December and January! Several years ago she also had the privilege of working for the Joffery Ballet when they were in a staff transition period. Barb joined the company during their tour to Art Park, in Buffalo and still considers the Romeo and Juliet production she viewed from backstage as one of the most thrilling productions of the classic tale.
	"Magical relighting helps Nutcracker shine" Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Hula
Since Dance Alloy's collaboration with Halau Hula Ka No`eau on the Big Island of Hawaii, Barb has worked as that company's lighting designer and production manager; she tours with them, as well as traveling to Hawaii for their annual season on Hawaii, Oahu, and Maui, and their very own Hawaiian Nutcracker. Kumu hula Michael Pili Pang's commitment to bring modern technology and understanding to the ancient dance and art form of hula continues to awe the audiences of Hawaii with new interpretations of culturally-sacred stories and dances that also allow for today's theatrical technical art. The company's tours on the mainland frequently bring the audiences their first experiences with what hula actually is - a way of life, a form of movement far-removed from Hollywood's interpretation, and therefore alien to the first-time viewers. Working with the company is a unique opportunity for someone not from Hawaii to learn a great deal about the history, language, music, dances and culture that is hula.
	"...lighting designer Barbara E. Thompson created dramatic effects that enhanced the show every step of the way." Honolulu Advertiser
Lighting for dance
The light is actually a partner to the dancer onstage. The light and the dancer form a relationship, once the dancer is made aware of the possibilities of working with such strange partner. The feel of the light, the temperature, the quality of it, and the color all actually touch the way the dancer feels about moving in the space, and therefore the way they move. The light also continues the movement initiated by the dancer, creates movement and highlights the movement of the dancers.A long-honored image that most easily describes this is that of a fish bowl. The fish is the dancer and the water is the light surrounding their boxed-in world... the stage.
Next time you are at the theatre...
...check out the lighting. But you may have to remind yourself to do so. A good lighting design will not draw attention to itself, unless that was the goal, but will be so integral a part of the performance, that it would seem lost without it. The stage is a canvas. And it should be painted. Barb is the painter.
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