Lighting Designer Lucy Carter uses the word ‘abstract’ a lot to describe most aspects of Dyad 1929. While there may not be a specific narrative as such, Wayne McGregor and Lucy have taken themes from Ballets Russes and the technological and aesthetic advancements of that period to create a bold, otherworldly lighting and stage concept for the production.

In 1909 one of Ernest Shackleton’s polar exploration teams reached the South Magnetic Pole. By 1929 Richard Evelyn Bird had looked down on that sublime and uninhabitable landscape from the window of an aeroplane.  Lucy shows me a copy of the famous Shackleton plates by photographer Frank Hurley The immensity of this great feat of the mechanical era suddenly dawns on me.

For Lucy, a white stage and cyclorama covered with black dots captures the way the eyes see as you zoom out of a landscape. The contours, shadows and prints come into focus. Staring at the set model in person, I can see the influence clearly. How it will look on stage is another matter. Lucy is emphatic that Dyad 1929 is not set in Antarctica, nor is it about people in a place at a particular point in time. “It is not necessary that audiences know the inspiration is polar-inspired, but that it evokes the environment through abstract means.”

Drawing on the arctic landscape, lighting is used to create a dark, stark environment contrasted with the blinding white intensity of the Antarctic sun. Lucy’s conception of the environment is seen in terms of the natural quality of light transformed into its essence. The sun (Antarctica’s only source of light) becomes a neon yellow line. Moving light is used to create a laser circle of light. Geometric lines, circles and linear patterns are all part of a scheme where lighting is virtual rather than physical. “It is used as the intervention rather than an object of the intervention” she says.

Lucy describes her designs as “strong lighting environments that have an architecture of their own. ” The lighting is integral to Dyad 1929’s aesthetic and “is meant to inform you how to view Wayne’s choreography.” It is used as a transition into the different environments. And while the resultant effect may be futuristic, according to Lucy it is not a process created as if by magic. The audience members can see the lines being lifted -  not by virtue of science fiction, but by mechanics.

A collaborative spirit was the essence of the Ballets Russes. Lucy sees the roles of costume designer, composer, lighting designer, and choreographer as “feeding into Wayne’s choreographic responses”.  Each element of the design is important in its own right and has its own ideas, and those ideas are of course influenced in part by other places.

I am always fascinated to discover artists’ inspirations.  Lucy refers to the “deadness of sound” in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, the hypnotic science fiction film set on an oceanic planet where humans struggle to communicate with unknown life forms. Other important inspirations on her work include Olafur Eliasson, whose haunting representation of the sun can be seen in his lighting installation The Weather Project.  James Turrell’s artistic exploration of light also surfaces in conversation as an important influence. With less than one week to go before the premiere of Dyad 1929, lighting is gradually being placed into sections of the dance. All I can say in summation is leave your compass at home.

Photography Teagan Glenane