A love affair with light

She wanted to soar into space, but ended up falling in love with light.

Jennifer Tipton’s long-standing love affair with light started just after she finished college in 1958. The daughter of a physicist mother and a zoologist father, she studied to be "the first person on the moon".

"But when I graduated, I went to New York to be a dancer. Then I fell in love with light, and here I am," says Tipton, an internationally acclaimed lighting designer with a list of stage credits that is four pages long.

Then a rehearsal mistress for a dance company, she was critiquing the performance of the dancers when she "looked at the bigger picture, and that was made by light. I’ve been in love ever since."

Though she gave up dancing a long time ago, Jennifer is passionate about her craft, which she describes as "painting with light. I also call it music for the eye because it has the same kind of structure, theme and variation. It has a beginning, middle and end."

Tipton says good lighting allows the audience to see and understand the meaning of what is on stage, while bad lighting confuses them.

"Light is very ephemeral. Audiences don’t really notice it. Ninety-nine percent of the audience don’t notice it, but a hundred percent is affected by it," she says.

Tipton, who recently conducted a workshop at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, does not believe in using words to teach. "To talk about light is not very useful. You need something to look at in the light," she says.

The workshop was attended by six lighting designers, six choreographers and six dancers. Tipton says she does workshops with an equal number of people from these professions because her workshops are about collaboration–how lighting designers and choreographers talk to each other, and how to put light on the stage.

She explains that she does not really teach; she and her students "go through possibilities" together.

"Each person does his or her own lighting, and we discuss...what’s strong about it, what’s not, what we would change if we had more time, and what we can’t change because of circumstance," Tipton says.

Since neither lighting designers nor dancers work with words, Tipton says this makes it difficult for them to talk to each other. But "putting light on stage, and seeing movement in light, that’s the language they can talk in, not with words."

One of her students, 28-year-old Gio Respall, raves about Tipton’s "secret" technique: the transition from one light source as the dancer moves from one part of the stage to another takes 15 to 20 seconds, which makes it barely noticeable to the audience.

Respall says that for a three-minute dance, he thought Tipton had only two "cues" or change in lighting, "but she had six cues!" One cue, for instance, is Tipton instructing the person manning the lights that she wants "circuit 64 at 50 time 10." Respall translates this to mean that Tipton wants one specific light (each light on stage has a designation) to gradually brighten up to 50 percent of its normal intensity in 10 seconds.

"The less cues, the better for a dance," he says. "If the lighting design distracts the audience, then it is wrong."

Respall was one of the youngest participants in the workshop, which he entered as a choreographer. He is also a professional dancer and theater actor.

Asked how Tipton’s workshop has contributed to his growth as an artist, Respall shouts, "Oh my god! And I thought it was just going to be another one of those workshops. As a visual artist, choreographer, and dancer, imagine how whole I am now."

During the workshop, Respall says Tipton reduced all her students to a "state of vulnerability" by making each of them do what is outside of their specialization. At one point in the workshop, lighting designers danced, dancers choreographed, and choreographers handled lighting design.

Throughout the workshop, Tipton and her students worked with "naked" lights, without color. On the last day of the workshop, Respall says each lighting designer was grouped with a choreographer and a dancer, and they had to produce one piece as a recital of sorts.

Respall choreographed a piece entitled "The Dead Poet’s Wife," and Tipton "introduced color in my piece." He says Tipton asked dancer Adelle Victoria to go back on stage to do the piece all over again, this time illuminating the piece with colored lights.

"I was so happy. Did you know there’s a color named after her... Tipton blue?" he says.

Tipton does not follow any basic principles in lighting design, save for the "pretty basic" rule that light can come from the front, sides and back.

Asked about the importance of lighting design in the success of a production, Tipton says, "Obviously, you don’t see a production without light, so someone is designing the light to reveal the dance or drama."

Her workshops are really about "training the eye" and she does this by having her students first look at the light–checking the available equipment and figuring out how to use them.

The second exercise has her students look at bodies under the light, and how they move. Even a still figure can look as if it is in motion, given the proper lighting.

"Light is very powerful. Moving light can move a still figure. You have to be more careful in how you move the light, when you move the light, not to distract, but to add to the meaning," Tipton says.

As for using various colors in her lighting design, Tipton says her choice of color is a "very personal thing," that comes from her gut, "whatever I feel is appropriate. I don’t have any rules."

The use of color is where "shadows" or "cool light" comes in. Green or blue are "cool" colors, while red is a "warm" color. Tipton explains that cool colors are seen as shadows by the human eye.

"If the light coming from one side is cooler, then that’s the shadow side," she explains, adding that how the front, back and side lights are balanced "is what design is–where you have the warm light, the source, the shadow. It makes a big difference where the light comes from."

When pressed to cite examples of bad lighting, Tipton winces.

"It’s about light, not about words. It’s hard to put it to words. It would be misleading to use words to try to describe it. We have to see it together so I can point out what I think is good, what I think is bad," she says.

Tipton also says that not only does a lighting designer have to consider the scenery and position of the various props–or people–on a stage, the physical features of a performer can also make a difference.

"In fact, we’re amused at how two different people look in the light," she says. A cast change, in which the substitute "principal dancer has a different color hair or skin... does make a difference" in the lighting design.

"At least in the Philippines, people have more or less the same hair and skin color," she laughs.

Tipton recalls a production in which dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov "looked terrible" in "traditional" lighting for a piece he did, with white light from the back and blue light from the side. "We changed it, of course," she says.

Though she did not comment on the state of lighting design in the Philippines–the last time she was here was in 1963 –Tipton notes that two of the best lighting designers in Beijing, where she recently conducted a workshop, use a lot of color and moving light.

Tipton has been based in New York City since she graduated from college. She has never married and has no children, but she finds the work she does fulfills her. She will turn 68 this September and plans to "keep on working" for the foreseeable future.

She accepts offers to do the lighting design for a production based on the people she would have to work with. The amount of equipment has nothing to do with her decisions. "I consider it a challenge to do a piece with not much equipment. It looks cleaner. It makes me think," Tipton says.

When she is not involved in a production or busy conducting workshops, Tipton says she has "a little place in Maine, on the coast" where she spends her time reading or just doing nothing.

"I love to read about the universe," she says, but has not had much time to update herself on recent discoveries. The light always beckons, and she must follow where it leads.