Transcript
Speaker: I'm Chris Farenthold, Director of Outreach at Madison Ballet, and this is at the Bar, your behind-the-scenes look at the ideas, stories, and creative processes shaping Madison Ballet's work.
Speaker: Each episode brings our community a little closer to the dancers, choreographers, and collaborators who are making ballet in Madison right now. Whether you're a seasoned ballet domain, current or former dancer, or simply curious about how dance gets made, we warmly invite you into the room where it happens.
Speaker: Welcome back to At the Bar with Madison Ballet. I'm Chris Farenthold, Director of Outreach at Madison Ballet. And today I'm joined on the podcast by Julie Ballard, the lighting designer for our upcoming production of Jekyll and Hyde.
Speaker: which opens for previews on Thursday, October 29th, and then continues through the weekend. So Julie is someone I've wanted to have on the podcast since we started it.
Speaker: Since part of looking behind the scenes of how ballet is made means seeing a lot of what literally illuminates the people on stage, but all of the disciplines and artisans and different kinds of artists that go into allowing us to see choreography and dance. So Julie, I've worked with several times in my capacity as production staff. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.
Speaker: Thanks for having me. How did you become interested in technical theater or how did you become interested in lighting theater if you came from some other direction? Is it you were a theater kid or you wanted to paint and now you paint with light? How did you come into this career? It's a little bit weird. When I started at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio for my undergrad, I wanted to be a juvenile probation officer. So I wanted to work with kids.
Speaker: And when I was in high school, I took one theater class. So there was no theater in the forethought. I felt very disconnected in my major. I was just a number. I had some friends that were in theater. And I guess my big personality, they were like, you would make a great stage manager in theater. And I was like, great. I have no idea what that is.
Speaker: But okay, let's try that. I switched majors and my grades skyrocketed. My focus skyrocketed. i went all in as a stage manager. And my senior year of undergrad, I took a lighting class.
Speaker: So I had one lighting class and then i graduated and i thought I knew it all. Sounds sounds's about right for a recent college graduate. Yeah, That's right.
Speaker: thought I knew it all. Turns out I didn't. Fun fact. I knew that I loved lighting more than I loved stage managing, but I didn't know a lot about it. So I went back to school. I went to the University of Florida and earned my Master's of Fine Arts in Lighting Design.
Speaker: From there, my love of design dance evolved while I was at UF. That's interesting. I would imagine that a juvenile detention officer would be a good stage manager generally. So that pipeline makes sense to me. You're wrangling both staff and talent. But that's really interesting to hear that you first came in through stage management and then the artistry aspect of light came later. We all make our way into theater or dance or ballet through many different ways. It's rarely the same thing. But I am interested in what the course of study for lighting design is that is different or separate from that of, say, a stage managing theater.
Speaker: I took a lot of classes that I didn't think that I would at UF. I took drawing. I took scene painting.
Speaker: We're taught to look at the whole picture, how you draw your hand. And those nuances of the crevices of your fingers teaches you how to really hone in on details. And then with scene painting, I did broad painting.
Speaker: All of that plays into when you're looking at the stage, how detailed and how wide of you you get at certain moments.
Speaker: So I took scene painting, drawing, graphic arts, painting, drafting, theater history. I took an architectural lighting class. That was my only B. Well, fortunately, in dance, we don't really have a lot of architecture on stage to light. So yeah it makes sense to me that light is really that kind of you know most elemental thing. aspect of theater because we don't see anything unless you show it to us.
Speaker: And how you show it to us depends on those things like the crevices of your hand and what lighting package you come up with. What are the unique challenges to lighting dance in particular? How is that different from street plays or anything else? The audience has a misconception that if their faces aren't lit, you can't hear them. There's that disconnect, right? In dance, we don't often have to deal with that. Sometimes we do.
Speaker: Sometimes we have to deal with talking on stage. Sometimes we have to deal with facial expressions that the choreographer has added in. When dealing with dance and the difference between dealing with theater, we're dealing with a different group of systems of lights that are our main source of light. And when I say a system of lights, I mean it's a group of fixtures focused and colored in the same way, doing the same thing.
Speaker: So you would have a system of front light. That's all of the lights that are usually out over the audience. So if you're in the audience, you look up, you see all the lights and they're focused at the stage. Chances are they are illuminating the face. In dance, we also have our side light that illuminates the dancer from offstage with the lights pointing onstage. They are crossing each other. So we are getting a sculpted view of the body.
Speaker: And what's so great about dance, or at least contemporary dance, understanding that Madison Ballet is a ballet company, but when we're dealing with contemporary dance, often we get a lot of different kind of body types. The dancers often want to be taller. So. So we use different angles. So we've got really low lights that are called shins. They're focused. You're not going to believe it at the shin.
Speaker: And then we work our way up. Our mids are usually focused at our hip. And when I say focused, I mean the hottest part of the light is pointed at that area. Then we have our heads, which is pointed at our head. And that is often a five foot six height So I'm actually kind of perfect for that height. And then sometimes we have a high head, which goes a bit above that, often focused around seven feet high. So the side light is our primary source of light when dealing with dance, as opposed to in theater. Front light is often our key light so that we can see and hear the actors on stage. There are also backlight, top light, diagonal backlight, and those do kind of exactly what they are described to be. Yeah, I will say working backstage at the ballet, the greatest transition, I should say, was not looking directly into the sidelight on the other side of the stage. If you're not familiar with it, it is very bright and it is coming from both directions all the time. All the
Speaker: Dancers grow up used to it, I guess, since they're like competitions and recitals, perhaps. But when you come over from theater or opera or something like that, it is a really different, unique thing. And I've gotten better at you look to the side and I'm very, if not most impressed by dancers being able to find their light and then dance in it without running into the boom or blinding themselves.
Speaker: I go on stage to focus and i have no idea how they do it time after time. And I've been doing this 25 plus years. I'm like, how do you guys see? And you know, that's one of the reasons why we give them a red spotting light front a house so that as they are turning, they know where front always is.
Speaker: I remember early on asking one of our dancers, how do you find your light? And she said, well, the dancers who can't don't dance anymore. so You need to be seen to be cast and applauded. So it's it's an evolved skill. I'm curious how you came in contact with the company. Had you worked with Jamalik any of the other members of the administration before?
Speaker: I did. The business is very, very small, as we know. I worked at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago as the stage manager and production manager. I was also with the second company for many years.
Speaker: And I have a really great relationship with Rena Butler. And she was hired to do Charlotte Ballet's Innovate 1960 program many years ago. And Ja Malik is also from the area and danced with the company. And so on that program was Rina and Ja.
Speaker: I met Ja there and I did a piece called Gypsy Moss with him. This was pre him getting the job at Madison Ballet. This was also during the pandemic or just right after the pandemic.
Speaker: And I was batting my eyelashes and was like, take me with you. if you need a designer. And he did. And I've been with him since he went to Madison.
Speaker: So what was the pitch from Jamalik for this particular collaboration like? I know we've done, you know, a Giselle act two. We've done a one act midsummer. We've done things that approach full length, but this is a two act full length story ballet. What did Jamalik bring to you as like, here's my vision for the show. How can you help me out?
Speaker: I remember standing in the Promenade Theater. We were working on our previous show and he comes up and he's holding this phone and he's got this video idea and it's taking over all the walls. And I was like, Shaw, what are you talking about? He's like, we're going to Jekyll and Hyde and I want video and it's going to be a full length. And Richard and I are choreographing it and stand by. and I was like,
Speaker: Well, okay, here we go. Richard and Ja are really great about guiding me with their thoughts. I get a nice outline of what they're thinking.
Speaker: And then i send back my thoughts and we have a conversation about what I have put forth versus what they originally said. And we just keep the conversation going. They are really integral to what we're about to do.
Speaker: And we just keep a Google Drive and emails. Yeah, that's how a lot of collaboration works these days. It sounds like a lot of what we heard from the costume designer as well, that kind of back and forth iterative process based on here's an idea. Well, here's another idea and back and forth. So projections, we've seen projections on the back of the scrim before in the psych, but are these going to be more detailed? Are they in lieu of a set? What can we expect to kind of see on stage?
Speaker: It's both. The projections are going to, in some cases, help drive the story and in some cases just sit back and be a set piece, if you will. But there is actual set pieces on stage that the dancers will work with and be in contact and use. And then i am highlighting other areas with video. I'm in process with video very close to done by the time I walk in.
Speaker: I guess when you have a long enough piece, you're going to want to create interest with many different techniques. Did the color palette come from Ja, or did he say, here's a vibe?
Speaker: They gave me a very wide range of things to play with. We're not really set in a time place, but I think I am pushing us to a place with some of the images, only because I really, really like the vibe.
Speaker: Until somebody says, hey, don't do that. I'm going to kind of just keep pushing some things forward. If it doesn't work for any reason whatsoever, it's easy to change. Easy is relative, but it will change based on the needs of where we are. I think that's generally good advice to you know do it and then see if you get the note. Right. What role has the music played for you in any of this? Or is it sort of secondary because you're primarily creating a visual environment for the music to take place in
Speaker: In regards to video, the music is secondary right now. I'm waiting to see some runs for lighting and music growing. greatly informs where we go lighting-wise. Because if it's really loud, chances are we're very bright. If it's quiet and intimate, chances are we're not as bright. We could be more isolated. It can be scarier, which will definitely inform the color.
Speaker: So music and lighting for me are more together than music and video because I'm not doing a lot of animations. Interesting. I understand why video would need to take place a lot more in terms of preparation because changing that seems a lot harder.
Speaker: What is that divide between what you can do before you come to town and then what you do once you're seeing runs in the room or um in tech week at the theater? A lot of sleepless nights if it doesn't go right.
Speaker: And honestly, that's what it is, because there'll be changes that have to get made. Sometimes video will have to get re-rendered. That takes quite a while if we're doing a lot of moving pieces within the video itself. If it's just a backdrop, that's a little bit easier to change because it might just be a still image. But I would say more often than not, even The backdrops will have a little hidden gems in there because we don't want it to be stagnant. We want to keep the audience engaged and hopefully coming back a second time. If something you know caught their eye or didn't because they were looking somewhere else, like that's also part of the fun is to see if we can keep them engaged and backed.
Speaker: So when you do come to town, and this can be either for a contemporary ballet that's four and a half minutes or, you know, something like Jekyll and Hyde, what are you doing once you get here? What aspect of creating the lighting plot or still designing gets done in the last week or two? The nuances get done in the theater. I'm really, really fortunate this time because I'm doing double duty that I'll have an assistant with me. And if I have to have my attention pulled into video land, my assistant will continue keeping the train on the tracks with lighting. We've worked together many, many years. i think, in fact, he's come up and designed for me at Madison when I couldn't. Eli Clinesmith.
Speaker: this allows me to be the Gemini that I am and have my split things happening. If something doesn't go the way it needs to go, John, I have gotten to a place where he doesn't have to tell me what he wants. He just has to tell me what he doesn't like.
Speaker: And I think that that's really important for any choreographer slash director, right? It's not your job to tell what that you want R79, R80, R33, you know, you just have to say, ooh I don't really like that color blue.
Speaker: I was thinking less saturated or more saturated. Then it's my job to be like, oh, I know that's that's our seventy six not R83. And then I give them something else to respond to. Kind of the same thing with video. oh, I don't like seeing that lamppost there, then I have to move it.
Speaker: Everything could go smooth as silk because I've been putting my images in the drive. Or once we see it on the big screen, we can be like, ooh, it was not the best choice.
Speaker: Yeah. And that gets at, if not the heart of John Malik in particular's process. I think a lot of artists or directors do this. You curate people around you who themselves can curate choices for you.
Speaker: And your job is to make choices and select among that length of skirt or that's too blue. And I have seen both in his work with you and... with others. That trust that's built up over time is really important to that. So you don't feel like every offering up of a look, you're auditioning or your life is on the line.
Speaker: right And likewise, yeah, saying I don't like that is not a negative. That is just us getting closer to what he wants on stage. Correct. I am happy to be part of the process, right? But I didn't come up with it. So I am a piece in the puzzle that has to get set in based on what the final picture is, right? So it's okay if it if it isn't what it's supposed to be. When the initial viewing happens, it's how we continue to collaborate. For me, I like to come in with my thoughts in a completed version one, right? So I come in pre-cued, pre-timed to what I'm thinking is a great starting point. Some of those cues stay.
Speaker: Some of them get deleted and some of them get refined. The thing that's important to me is unless I have been asked to create something in the moment, I try to have everything done so that number one we aren't building because queuing takes a long time. You've got a whole bunch of lights and you have to tell them what to do. I try to maximize the time that I have dancers in the theater, when I have the dancers in the theater, and that is seeing things with them.
Speaker: If I have to build 100 light cues and everybody's sitting there waiting for me to build 100 cues, it's going to be a very long day for everybody. Yeah, the ah money people don't like that use of the budget either. They really, really don't. So part of why I really wanted to have you on, Julie, was that we've talked to dancers and choreographers and teachers, but there's so many moving parts in a ballet that many of us don't know what others do.
Speaker: Lighting in particular is one of those things that I don't think a lot of the public certainly, and maybe even some of the dancers or artists themselves, know what exactly is happening on mornings during tech week after they've gone home and while they're either taking company class back in the studio. But one of those great surprises to me was that the lighting folks and then other people, you guys are at the theater at eight, nine in the morning doing what exactly? What happens on mornings during tech week? We're doing notes. So the way that I work, I have a cue sheet that I follow. It tells me what cue it is where the cue is called, the duration of the cue, meaning how long the cue takes to complete and what is happening in that cue. So say from cue two to cue three, i want the backlight to go from blue to pink in 30 seconds.
Speaker: So I write all that down on a cue sheet and then I tell the lights what to do on the board. And then when we're watching it, pink was not the right choice. Bad choice. So I'm going to try something else. I'm going to try dark green. Well, that has to take time to change. So on my notes, I write down what that is. And then that's the time that I get to change it.
Speaker: Or say the choreographer changed the choreography. And now we have a solo stage, right? But it's going to take me a few minutes to move the lights over there. So that's what I'm doing during that morning session. I'm taking all of the information from the previous night, getting it all set up again to what the note was, whether it was given to me by the choreographer, whether it was given to me by myself, or I mean, part of the collaboration is the costume designer, right? If we are in conversation and I have picked the wrong gel or the wrong color for their fabric, do we think it's easier for me to change the color or do we think it's easier for the costume designer to rebuild the whole garment?
Speaker: Chances are it's me, right? We're making sure that everybody is able to, this is so silly, to shine as brightly as they can, right? So we want to make sure that everybody's work is represented in the way that they envisioned for themselves. And sometimes that's just me having to change things. Oh, that's so fascinating. And a look, well, not behind the curtain, it's quite literally in front of the curtain. What happens on stage during that time can involve an assistant stage manager running out with a costume on a hanger to check just that fabric choice, you know, under a new light, or you find whatever bodies are around to stand in approximate locations.
Speaker: We love a good light walker. Yeah. Light walkers for the win. That's also a very good way to get into theater. If you're curious, by the way, folks, if you light walk, you can just watch everyone at work in the mornings. And if you can stand there or sometimes there's a bench, if it's Nutcracker, you get lucky. But yeah.
Speaker: Oh, well, this fantastic. I did want to ask if there were in your career, like when you look back on shows you've been a part of or shows that you've designed for, are there any sort of standouts or ones that were either turning points for you or ones that you're particularly proud of?
Speaker: I have a list of five that are just my all-time favorites. Some of them I had something to do with, some of them I didn't. And these are in no particular order. Power Goes by The Seldoms. It's a Chicago company.
Speaker: It was a piece loosely based on Lyndon Baines Johnson, and it was about the struggle of power. and that... piece featured 78 92 hanging white chairs that I hauled all over the country.
Speaker: And it ran for a couple of years and it was fantastic. That was a really great collaboration to be a part of. David Dorfman's Underground. I started out as the assistant projections designer, worked my way, opened my big mouth and said, hey, who's watching over the lighting? So then I became the lighting supervisor. And then because I was with every show, I became the stage manager when the stage manager moved on. So I went through many different iterations of that.
Speaker: And that piece took me to Poland and Russia, Atlanta, California. It was a wonderful, wonderful piece. Day Two by Palabolos. I'm just a fan of that one. Minus 16 by Batsheva, which is also known as Ehud. And I had the opportunity to call that When I was with Hubbard Street in a larger evening called Decadence Chicago and on the Madison Ballet front, I'm a big fan of Hallelujah Junction. i thought that piece came out so pretty. The dancing was exquisite. Choreography was amazing. Big fan of Hallelujah Junction.
Speaker: Oh yeah, that was a beautiful piece. Very hard to find where you were in the counts with those two pianos going if you lost your place. Gorgeous production. Yeah, I love that. Well, do you have any advice for people who want to do what you do? If what you do sounds interesting to them, it sounds like there are many ways in. So what would you, I guess, say to someone who wants to know more about how to become a lighting designer? You can get involved in community theater. You know, you can get involved anywhere. You can call Madison Ballet and see if you can observe tech.
Speaker: How you get in, it doesn't matter. There are some fundamentals in lighting that you have to be aware of. You can't just walk in and be like, I'm a lighting designer. There's a lot of technology that is around these days. Some of that you can learn on your own. Some of that you might go to school for so that you can have access to different technology. But school isn't the only way. I know a lot of folks that have learned from on their own. And there are a lot of programs, the ETC electronic theater controls, which is like based in metal literally 20 minutes away from Madison.
Speaker: They have a wonderful program, augmented 3D, and it allows you to build a virtual space and you use the same syntax, turning lights on and off. that you do on a control board. The same thing with the Grand a They have a pre-visualization software as well. So there's a lot that you can do with no gear.
Speaker: If you're interested in it, shadow somebody. Become an assistant. Learn the paperwork. It's a very rewarding field. It's a very hard field, but I honestly can't see myself doing anything else in it.
Speaker: That's how you know you've landed where you should be. i think so, yeah. Well, thank you so much, Julie. I really appreciate you spending time with us. Thank you. I'll look forward to seeing you at Tech Week later to this month. And everyone listening to our voices can come see Julie Ballard's work at the My Arts Theater in Madison, Wisconsin. Previews began October 29th. And then we have performances on the 30th, the 31st, and November 1st.
Speaker: So thanks again, Julie, and I will see you soon. Yeah, just in time for Halloween. So come on out.
Speaker: Thank you for tuning in to At the Bar with Madison Ballet. If you enjoyed this episode, we invite you to experience Madison Ballet in person by joining us at one of our upcoming performances or community events.
Speaker: From accessible, innovative productions to in-depth conversations with artists, our goal is to create welcoming spaces where everyone can experience ballet in a meaningful way.
Speaker: You can find performance dates, event details, and ticket information on our website and social media platforms. Whether it's your first time attending or you're a long-time supporter, we'd love to see you in the audience and share the experience with you live.
Speaker: Thanks again for listening. We hope to see you at the ballet soon.
