Page 2 - Beverly Emmons: Lighting Broadway, Enlightening Tomorrow

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Beverly Emmons | New York, New York
is making. What’s important is the work on the stage—the dancers, the actors, the vision of the director, playwright, choreographer—
and how this play or this dance should be seen. It is the work that is important, and our role is to reveal and reinforce it. It’s an honor to be useful in that area.”
A MAsterpiece shines On: the MArthA GrAhAM DAnce cOMpAny
The legendary modern dancer and choreographer Martha Graham founded the Martha Graham Dance Company, which moved audiences for much of the 20th century, in 1926. When Graham approached Emmons in 1982 to light the entire repertory, Emmons was honored to carry on the renowned tradition. “It’s not my lighting as much as
a continuation of lighting designs done by Jean Rosenthal, the origi- nal lighting designer who worked
. ...............
“I like to call lighting design a secondary art form. We support and reveal the work that somebody else is making. What’s important is the work on the stage—the dancers, the actors, the vision of the director, playwright, choreographer—and how this play or this dance should be seen. It is the work that is important, and our role is to reveal and reinforce it.”
– Beverly Emmons, Lighting Designer, New York, New York . ...............
with Graham from 1936-1969.
I’m making the lighting modern
for now, but keeping it within the vocabulary of the period because Graham is period work,” says Emmons. “People say, ‘there’s nothing new here,’ and my answer to them is ‘you don’t go to a mu- seum and throw out the Picassos because they’re out of date. They are the treasures of their period.’”
The company tours many countries across the world, moving constantly from theater to theater. In collabora- tion with the touring lighting supervi- sor, Judith Daitsman, Emmons
uses computer-driven technology to communicate the lighting needs of the company in advance of their arrival. She relies on Vectorworks® Spotlight software with Lightwright®
to manage it all. Whether the company is performing in Tel Aviv, Istanbul, Milan, or Honolulu,
the show needs to look the same. Emmons and Daitsman continually adapt the lighting to new theaters, new architecture, new equipment, and new countries’ crews. “There’s a tremendous amount
of information going back and forth between the touring lighting designer and the venues and they can be explicit about what they have. They send drawings to us, we send drawings back to them, and we can be certain of the draw- ings’ accuracy even when they’re coming from abroad and they’re metric. Vectorworks works very well for dance that must use an ongoing light plot that can change only slightly, but must support the
Embattled Garden from Martha Graham Dance Company.