Association of Lighting Designers 50th Anniversary Celebrations
As part of their 50th Anniversary celebrations and conference on 13th and 14th January, The Association of Lighting Designers (ALD) announced a new international award which honours practitioners who have made a sustained and significant contribution to the art and esteem of theatre and live performance lighting design. The recipient of the Anniversary Medal for Sustained Excellence in Lighting Design for Live Performance was Jennifer Tipton, who has been at the top of her profession for a number of years and engenders a philosophy and practice which has inspired generations of theatre makers, especially in the world of contemporary dance.
Tipton’s distinguished career includes many Tony Awards for winning Broadway designs, as well as long term creative relationships with American Ballet Theatre, Paul Taylor Dance Company, and choreographers: Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Dana Rice and Shen Wei. As Adjunct Professor of Design at the Yale School of Drama since 198, Jennifer has trained many of the top lighting designers working around the world today, and continues to inspire respect and admiration amongst the emerging generation of theatre makers.
“All human beings know about light” but few have spent as much time thinking about it, playing with it and manipulating it, to such striking effect as Jennifer Tipton. To spend an afternoon looking at light and listening to her speak was an education for me – and I suspect everyone else in the room,' said Nick Moran, ALD member and Senior Lecturer in Lighting Design at Central. "She was also generous enough to deliver two master classes – one for students and one open – on the Central School’s Embassy Theatre stage (the same site where Edward Gordon Craig first practiced lighting design just over 100 years ago). Through ALD Professional Design Member Michael Hulls, we secured the services of two dancers from Ballet Rambert. Working with them as static and dynamic models, Jennifer asked her audience to look hard at how light renders the body. In the student masterclass, she brought her audience up onto stage, and asked them to experience “how it feels to be in the light as a performer”. We investigated the “membrane” between lit and un-lit space, discovering in the process just how difficult it often is for the performer to know where that membrane is – to know if they are or are not in the light."
The day concluded with an industry panel discussion chaired by Nick Moran. Several generations of UK dance lighting designers joined Jennifer to discuss the role of the Lighting Designer in making new dance work for the stage. Michael Hulls talked about taking a lighting idea into the dance studio to make work with his long-term collaborator Russell Maliphant. John B Read talked about his early days lighting dance, with shins, head-height cross, and not much else, contrasting that experience to working with the extensive resources of the Royal Opera House. Lucy Carter (a postgraduate alumna) and Mark Jonathan spoke about the pressure of realising ideas you have only been able to talk about, in the compressed production periods that are so often part of making new work with larger dance companies.