Lighting Techniques For Spectacular Dance Shows

1. Colour Choices and Skin Tones

If you can learn what colours might look great on the dancers’ skin tones, you can immediately improve the look of your whole show, and highlight all of those smiley faces. There are no universal rules as to what works or not, just have a play and have fun to figure out which lighting colours are particularly flattering for the dancers’ skin tones.

You can use the light to not only match and highlight skin tones, but you can also use it to enhance the rich colours and textures of the costumes, to allow them to shine too!

2. Use Colour to Time Travel

If you want to take the audience to a specific time period during your show, use the lighting effectively to help transport them there. You could use warmer colours like amber to represent ‘memories’ because it can make everything feel as though you are looking at a sepia photograph. On the other end of the spectrum you could try using harsher blues and purples to take the audience far into the future.

3. Colour Can Create a Complete Scene

If you want your dance to take place in a summer field or a state-of-the-art space craft, you can use lighting to create your scene. The use of different lighting and techniques such as silhouettes or strobes can turn a boring stage into an exciting environment. Use colours to represent heat, or use strobes to represent technology or explosions.

4. Colour Can Be Fun!

Bright! Flashy! Vibrant! Immersive dances that invite audiences into your show can be made using exciting lighting. Using the colour palette from the dance’s inspiration can be a very creative and fun experience, which also helps to take the audience on your journey. Using highly saturated colours can take an average performance and turn it into a jazzy, romantic, futuristic, playful and fun environment for your dancers and audience! Have fun is the number one rule for lighting. Every now and again it’s fine to go nuts with your creations!

5. Colour Conveys an Idea

Throwing the spotlight on the a very specific idea can be extremely powerful during a live show. Using single spotlights to represent loneliness, or side lights to represent confusion, are 2 simple ideas that can really evaluate your performances. An example would be a dancer lit by a low side light to carve them from the surround, while the framing space remains black. Use different layers of lighting and textures to enhance your idea and help visualise what you have in your head as the creative force.