SEEING THE STAGE BY
CLARE CROFT
ANN CARLSON. PHOTO: STUART RUCKMAN
WHEN ANN CARLSON’S “ELIZABETH, THE DANCE” PREMIERED IN SALT LAKE CITY, THE FIRST THING THE AUDIENCE SAW WAS A FREESTANDING, WHITE, RECTANGULAR WALL. Light rose from
vertical lines of bulbs that traced the ceilings and would-be wings, revealing the stage as otherwise bare. The pairing of set and light directed attention to depth and edges, so that the audience had to notice the very thing performance often works to make people forget: they were looking at a stage. “Elizabeth” is not the only dance in Peak Performances’ season that forces a close look at this thing called a stage. The choreographer Liz Gerring will complete a trilogy commissioned by Peak with a work that (as of this writing) is titled “Field,” following “glacier” (2013) and “horizon” (2015). Her abstract choreography, virtuosic yet somehow warm, unfolds in the trilogy in intensely demarcated space — a result
of a particular combination of the dancing and Robert Wierzel’s set and lighting design. In “glacier,” a long, softly lit panel runs the width of the stage, extending well into the wings and accentuating the work as a rush along the horizontal. In “horizon,” two luminous panels (materials repurposed from “glacier”) hover: one a back wall and one floating at a slight tilt above. The top panel functions as lid, pressing energy back toward the dancers. Their movement is amplified because the space pushes the eye back toward them. To notice the physical space in which dancers move seems the easiest of audience tasks. In theater spaces with proscenium structures — a clearly demarcated playing space, a stage, viewed through a frame, often an arch — the audience stares straight forward and through the frame. Ancient Greek theater makers imagined this
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