ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the evolution of lighting design in dance performances from fire to electric lighting, focusing on electric lighting to show its potential as an artistic statement in dance performances. It presents the visual strategies developed by choreographers/lighting designers Loie Fuller, Alwin Nikolais, and William Forsythe. The chapter outlines the design of the research in which shadows were chosen as the subject of study. It discusses the iterative-cycle method, a term coined by American philosopher Donald Schon in parallel with the concept of active imagination developed by Jung and applied in the context of dance by Bacon, as it informed the practice-led research on shadows. Active imagination has also been applied in dance from a psychotherapeutic perspective, approaching the act of dancing, or moving, as a medium to express imagination, with the primary purpose being self-development rather than the artistic outcome.
