Move into the Light...
As we celebrate the innovative approach to light taken by visual artists such as James Turrell and François Morellet, here we’d like to direct your attention to the role of light in other artistic contexts.
Acclaimed German lighting designer Urs Schönebaum began by studying photography in Münich, but quickly transitioned to working with the power of light in performance. Since 2000, Schönebaum has designed lighting for a range of operatic, theatrical, dance, and visual arts performances around the world, at venues including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, and l’Opéra National de Paris.
New York audiences will soon have an opportunity to see Schönebaum’s stunning lighting designs in person. In November 2018, the ground-breaking Berlin dance company Sasha Waltz & Guests will bring Waltz’s latest production, Kreatur, to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. Kreatur was in development for 12 years before its début at Radialsystem V, Berlin, in June 2017.
Considering human existence against the backdrop of a disrupted society, the performance grapples with the tension and drama of the power dynamics that ripple through our personal and public lives. Schönebaum’s stunning backdrop punctuates areas of dark shadow with stark—almost neon— light that evokes the vivid ring of fire we see during an eclipse, or the clustered lights of a city spotted far down the horizon. With costumes for the 14 dancers designed by Iris van Herpen and music by Soundtrack Collective, Waltz’s latest production is a tour de force. If you find yourself in France’s Provence region this summer, you can also see Kreatur performed at the Festival d’Avignon from July 7–14.
This text was organized in the spirit of our “Summer Lights” programming, which includes
“FOCUS: Yves Klein | James Turrell”, “Neon in Daylight: François Morellet”,
“Depth Perception: James Turrell”, and “Johannes Girardoni: Sensing Singularity”