Week 10 [Passion] - Bella Keegan

Earlier this quarter I confessed my adoration of all things concerning the circus. If I'm being honest, I spend most of my free time training aerial silks because it is one of the few things that makes me truly happy. In a way, the circus is one of my absolute passions. Being up in the air I feel freer than I have ever felt on the ground, on the stage, or within a classroom learning. Throughout the quarter, I've been thinking of different ways to light circus performances. How do you light something so similar to dance but deal with the fact it happens in the consuming void of the air? Below is a video of me training in a studio that had blacklight lighting, which despite being poorly captured on video, made me realize that for things such as the circus arts and dance, the form of the body is the most important. Physical arts such as dancing rely so heavily on the body to tell the story and it was through the video below and its duotone from the lights that made me also realize that simple things can be just as beautiful, if not more so, than things that are overcomplicated. Although the face can be used to tell a story in dance, the body does most of the heavy lifting. I also recently saw a newly produced musical called Cages in LA this week, and while I would argue that this piece was not technically theatre, they did a lot of story telling through silhouettes and body language. Although a face can be important, what can truly make the difference in a scene of any kind is the body and the negative space it creates. I have always immensely enjoyed silhouettes within lighting and photography, and I think my adoration for that is that while it may be considered simplistic, it truly enhances what you are trying to look at and minimizes what you do not need to see. Lighting's ability to help guide the audience to what we want to see while also creating beautiful imagery are two of the main reasons why I have come to really enjoy it and am so enraptured by the story telling elements in can enhance and also create on its own.