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Russia: Lighting design at the Night of Museums 2016

Organized in conjunction with the traditional “Night of Museums” held all around the world on May, 21 2016, the multi-sensorial event “Manege” attracted a wide audience to the largest cultural facility in Moscow. In order to celebrate its 199th anniversary, the authors wanted to recreate a metaphorical association between present and future through the usage of theater, dance and music performances enhanced by a dedicated lighting design.

In order to let the audience concentrate on the perception of its architectural and artistic essence, "Manege" hall had been completely emptied and entrusted as an open space to a team of artists displaying a variety of genres of contemporary performing arts in perfect harmony with the surrounding atmosphere. Graduates of the Academy of Russian Ballet, dancers from the cooperative Aysedorino, actors from the Gogol School and members of a sound installation by the composer Vladimir Gorlinsky played together on this unformal stage.

Invited by the organizers of the event, the lighting designer Sergei Sizyi developed and implemented a lighting concept based on the idea to show the connection between past and present of the Manege hall, combining the internal space with the outside walls in order to create a scenario of interaction among human performances, architecture and contemporary art.

In the lighting concept of Sergei Sizyi, the minimalism of the stage design was splendidly supported by a clever usage of light and shadows. The main light source in the open space was created by two powerful lighting fixtures by GRIVEN: Coral RGBW with medium optics and Diamond RGBW with medium optics working in warm white color mode. Their light beams were directed diagonally to the main line of motion of the actors in order to enhance their profiles while avoiding reflections on the backdrop. In order to create a strong contrast, the background was filled with cold saturated blue light coming from an array of Parade S-RGBW-40 with wide optics. More shadows and reflections were created by the actors themselves, who, moving around the stage illuminated by different light sources, duplicated their gestures adding expressiveness to the performance.

A perfect combination of visual arts, music and lights made this extraordinary artistic event a true success.

Credits:

Curator MBO project "Arena": Anna Bu'aale

Stage lighting: Sergey Sizyi

Photos by Sergey Sizy