Light, Like Music, Can help establish the rhythm

by Jennifer Tipton

...The scenery in a stage production marks the boundary of the space, but the light marks or fills the volume of that space, giving the actors, dancers, or singers a landscape in which to exist. The rhythm of that space is basic to the rhythm of the piece. Is it spotty with patches of light and dark; or is it seamless, fluid, penetrating every corner like the air filling the space? Does it change from place to place within the space ir does the whole light/space change over time --or both? Do these changes happen abruptly or slowly, almost imperceptibly? Light and time are so tightly linked that they are as one. We somehow mark time by the changing light, and we mark our relation to it by how we feel in each light.

Mother Light
Brightly Beams Jennifer Tipton's Theatrical Legacy, At Yale, And Worldwide

FRANK RIZZO, Hartford Courant

For more than three decades, Jennifer Tipton has been the Mother Superior of Light, playing with illumination and shadows on theater, dance and opera stages, both large and small, around the world.

Light, Like Music, Can Help Establish the Rhythm
By JENNIFER TIPTON

The lighting designer Jennifer Tipton is well known for her work in dance, theater and opera. Her recent work in dance includes Trisha Brown's "Winterreise" for the Lincoln Center Festival and Paul Taylor's "Promethean Fire" at the American Dance Festival. On Jan. 16, Ms. Tipton, 65, received a Jerome Robbins Prize for excellence in the arts. The following is based on a speech she gave while an artist in residence at the Isabella Gardener Stewart Museum in Boston in 1997.