One of the first things that intrigued me about light was the color. Watching a sunrise and the resultant building and receding of those myriad pastels of yellow, lavender and blue. Or sunsets and the deep rich orange and purple and green. And while these still hold a lot of power for me and I love a rich orange or a piercing yellow or the infinite depths of blue, I have had a growing appreciation for the many shades of grey.
I am a big fan of William Forsythe and of course saw his company when they came through BAM recently. The set was made up of a grey marley floor, white and plain blond wood walls and a white plastic cyc. Yet these colors hit me as strongly as the dancing. There was a power in the strict simplicity of the setting that would have been lost amid stronger colors. It allowed the movement and the drama to be seen that much more clearly and strongly.
The lighting too held to this minimal palette. For those of you who like numbers the colors ranged from 2300-5600 degrees Kelven. For the rest of us, the lighting was a warm incandescent light to a cool daylight. The small changes in color within this range truly brought out the subtlety in a work that might otherwise be seen in a more blunt fashion. The rigor that went into constructing this tight color palette showed off the rigor of the choreography so well.
I love strong uses of color, the saturated reds and purples of sunset. I love pastels, that thin morning light. But perhaps more than that I love the grey. The overcast shadowless day. There is still morning and midday and afternoon. There is still much variation in the color of the day. But the changes are as shades of grey. Beautifully subtle and imperceptibly strong, these colors effect us more than we often give them credit.
Our lives are colored by this grey light. In a world of unending conflict and strife, there is something to the softness of this grey world that sets the chaos in stark relief. The antics of the capitalist war machine take on a profound absurdity against this wonderfully textured grey backdrop. We see the subtle sifts and currents of our daily lives so much more when the film is developed in black and white and grey.
Tags: aesthetics, color, grey, william forsythe
Nice
This is beautiful. Especially so from someone who loves light, but can’t create it like lighting designers do. I’m a bit color-challenged.
Thanks! -Tom Loughlin
Re: Nice
Oh, thank you.