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The light fantastic

12 February 2008

Music and dance are just two of the elements that go into a Birmingham Royal Ballet performance, with costumes, sets and lighting all contributing to the production that you see. Birmingham Royal Ballet has been lucky enough to work with some of the most gifted designers working today, such as Steven Scott, who worked on The Shakespeare Suite and The Orpheus Suite.

Nick Ware, Birmingham Royal Ballet's head of lighting at the time of their creations, explains what makes them unique.

'Orpheus... and Shakespeare Suite were different in one respect for us because the set designer was the same as the lighting designer.

'Normally in a creative team in ballet you have the choreographer at the top of your pyramid and he engages a team. If he needs a new score produced, he'll find a composer, and if he needs sets and costumes he'll source a designer, who nine times out of ten will do both.

'Occasionally, as with some of our productions like Arthur and Edward II, the set designer is one person and the costume designer is another – in those cases Jasper Conran. But what I hadn't seen until Orpheus... and The Shakespeare Suite was someone who did both set and lighting design.'

Steven Scott was a technical manager who had moved into design, and by the time of The Orpheus Suite in 2004 he had produced a large number of light-based indoor art installations. His designs for Birmingham Royal Ballet use light as an essential element.

Nick explains further: 'The set is an integral part of the lighting - it actually creates some of the effects. Taking Shakespeare Suite, you've got that black wall with the nickname of 'the graphic equaliser', because it looks like one from the front of a hi-fi. And that's heavily backlit and changes throughout to provide all the different images for all the different characters.

'With The Orpheus Suite you've got two things going on within the set design. First you've got the LED back wall, with 17 panels that create colours, chases, effects and spaces like doorways, and train effects. But it then flies out and you've got this light box behind and you go into the underworld and that whole sequence – the appearance of infinity really, using space and light.'

A lot of work went into creating such a unique design. Steven presented his concept first to choreographer David Bintley, and then to Nick and the rest of the lighting and set department.

'We built one of the panels as a prototype' Nick remembers, 'because although he'd used the concept and materials in different installations he'd done, he'd never done it on this scale, so we had to build one section as a test just to prove how much intensity we were going to get, and to look at how we were going to control it.

'Steve had made a smaller example, no bigger than a sheet of A3, and we went straight from there, straight onto the internet looking for products to build a full-scale version. We ended up with products from all over the world, German products, Danish products, and we put it all together to create the entire back wall.'

click here to read the second half of this article.

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