ABSTRACT

Dance Production: Design and Technology introduces you to the skills you need to plan, design, and execute the technical aspects of a dance production. While it may not seem that staging a dance production is that different from a play or musical, in reality a dance performance offers up unique intricacies and challenges all its own, from scenery that accommodates choreography, to lighting design that sculpts the body, and costumes that complement movement. This unique book approaches the process of staging a dance production from a balanced perspective, making it an essential resource for dancers and designers alike.

Covering a broad range of topics, author Jeromy Hopgood takes the reader through the process of producing dance from start to finish – including pre-production planning (collaboration, production process, personnel, performance spaces), design disciplines (lighting, sound, scenery, costumes, projections), stage management, and more. Bridging the gap between theatrical and dance design, the book includes a quick reference guide for theatrical and dance terminology, useful in giving dancers and designers a common working vocabulary that will ensure productive communication across the different fields.

chapter |4 pages

Introduction

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.

part I|46 pages

Thinking Ahead

chapter Chapter 1|15 pages

Collaboration

In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.

chapter Chapter 2|11 pages

Pre-Production Planning

A goal without a plan is just a wish.

chapter Chapter 3|16 pages

Performance Spaces

The stage is a concrete physical place which asks to be filled, and to be given its own concrete language to speak.

part II|208 pages

Production Areas

chapter Chapter 4|25 pages

Lighting

Lighting affects everything light falls upon. How you see what you see, how you feel about it, and how you hear what you are hearing.

chapter Chapter 5|15 pages

Creating the lighting Design

The secret lies in our perception of light in the theatre as something alive. Does this mean that we are to carry images of poetry and vision and high passion in our minds while we are shouting out orders to electricians on ladders? Yes, that is what it means.

chapter Chapter 6|13 pages

Sound

Music begins where the possibilities of language end.

chapter Chapter 7|15 pages

Creating the Sound Design

Each and every sound is nothing more than a collection of frequencies that change over time. You can use these frequencies like paint, combining them to make new colors.

chapter Chapter 8|17 pages

Scenery and Props

You can't act alone. Use the props, the setting, the crew around you, and of course, your fellow actors.

chapter Chapter 9|21 pages

Creating the Scenic Design

Design is interesting to me as it relates to narrative: the design has to support the narrative. Storytelling is the most important thing.

chapter Chapter 10|23 pages

Costumes, Hair, and Make-up

The costume designer is not only essential (but) is vital, for it is they who create the look of the character without which no performance can succeed. Theirs is a monumental job, for they must be not only artists, but technicians, researchers and historians.

chapter Chapter 11|17 pages

Creating the Costume Design

Costumes are the first impression that you have of the character before they open their mouth—it really does establish who they are.

chapter Chapter 12|21 pages

Projections and Video

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

chapter Chapter 13|13 pages

Creating the Projection Design

Projected images are ephemeral; they live in another more poetic dimension. Dance is the poetry of music as made manifest by the body. Projection and dance are an inevitable and welcome combination.

chapter Chapter 14|16 pages

Stage Management

Perhaps, therefore, ideal stage managers not only need to be calm and meticulous professionals who know their craft, but masochists who feel pride in rising above impossible odds.

part III|24 pages

Quick Reference

chapter Chapter 15|11 pages

Dance Terminology

One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.

chapter Chapter 16|10 pages

Theatre/Stagecraft Terminology

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.