Behind the Scenes by John Miller – February 2024
Dancers live in light as fish live in water. The stage space in which they move is their aquarium, their portion of the sea. Within translucent walls and above the stage floor, the lighting supports their flashing buoyance or their arrested sculptural bodies. The dance is fluid and never static. Designing for the dance has been my most constant love. I have designed the decor as well as the lighting for a good many ballets and I have installed the basic systems with which I have worked in dance repertory. If I leave anything to posterity, it will be, I think, most importantly in the field of dance lighting.
~Jean Rosenthal, The Magic of Light
I’m sure that somewhere I still have a well-worn copy of Jean Rosenthal’s The Magic of Light. Her book was key to my growth as a lighting designer, moving beyond the mere technical aspects of lighting and seeing it as an art.
I began lighting dance on a regular basis in graduate school as the dance and theater programs were closely related. Usually dance performances have very minimal sets and often it is just the dancer and the lights. There are much fewer restrictions in lighting dance. A play you have to stick to the script; in dance, anything goes!
The Reif Dance program is very strong and typically has three performances a season, The Nutcracker, the Spring Dance production, and a Company Dance performance. What is unique about the Company Dance show is the focus on students. Co-Director Christina Anderson, “This year’s performance is about going back to the roots of our mission and showcasing the versatility of our dancers. The performance will be fun and approachable for our audiences.”
The focus on the students has always been a highlight of Company Dance. Co-Director Grace Derfler, “It is a way to showcase our seniors who are graduating perform innovative choreography of their own. Even Greg, from our backstage tech crew, choreographed a piece back in 2020! I am so grateful to be able to work with such creative minds and for my students to be able to bring the story to life on stage!” Greg loved his experience choreographing, I think mostly because he chose an instrumental cover of his favorite KISS song, “Black Diamond!”
Some of you may remember when the performance included “Dancing with our Stars.” We had “celebrities” from the community such as teachers, doctors, bankers, and politicians. They would be paired with a senior dance student who would select a style of dance, pick the music, and choreograph their duet. A panel of judges would narrow the field down to two, at which time the audience voted on the winner! The celebrities usually did a great job, although they still had to endure some good-natured ribbing from the judges!
Another year the production featured a collaboration between the Reif Dance Company and the Grand Rapids High School Band. The Dance Company performed selections from West Side Story with live accompaniment by the GRHS band. I mostly remember the mad scramble at intermission to set up risers for the band against the back wall behind the dancers!
For many years I did the lighting for the Company Dance performance, but as things have gotten busier at the Reif I’ve had Melanie step in the last few years. I thought this would be a great time to get to know her better!
Get to know your Tech – Melanie McCoy
How did you come to work at the Reif Center?
I knew about this being a job opportunity in high school. My brother worked here when he was in high school and we are six years apart in age. I began working here in ninth grade in 2001. After I graduated high school and attended college for a few years, I came back and loved working here so much I never left! I have been one of the regular tech crew since around 2012 and within the last year I took on more responsibility as the Production Manager. I do quite a few more shows on my own, including both local and touring productions.
What are some of your most memorable shows, experiences, or stories?
One of the first shows I worked at the Reif Center was a touring production of “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The main part I remember from this show was that they came with four semi-trucks and it was the biggest show I’d ever helped with at the time.
Another show that stands out in my mind was when Ed Asner did a one-man on our stage. As students we were taught to avoid being “star seekers” and treat everyone equally no matter how “big name” they were. Ed Asner was lovely and was happy to chat with anyone. His manager had to encourage him to get moving after the performance, otherwise Ed would have stayed all night just chatting and spending time with anyone who wanted to.
One of the crews I really look forward to working with comes with Rock ‘n’ Roll Christmas Spectacular. Scooter who sets up and operates the lights, Rustin and John who set up and operate the sound. They have been here with many shows other than Rock and Roll Christmas and have become like family to us.
With all the professional touring shows at the Reif Center we get to see a lot of technology that is newer for us, and I like to check it out to see if it’s something we can use here. I enjoy shows that come through with crew patient enough to take the time to teach us techniques and skills used for their show. I love learning new things!
It’s so nice to work with groups who are so appreciative of the time we take to make their show go as smoothly as we can make it go. A simple “Thank You” goes so far to making an experience a good one!
How did you start doing the lighting for Company Dance?
One year John said, “You’re doing lights for Company Dance this year,” and that was the start of it. I remember being nervous as that may have been the first time for me to be running a show with lights and audio entirely on my own, but I’ve enjoyed it ever since! It’s a chance to have creative freedom on a larger scale.
What do you like about doing the lighting for Company Dance?
I like the opportunities the Company Dance show affords me to be able to create something and collaborate with the choreographers in constructing a cohesive vision for each part of the show. It’s something that’s basically a blank canvas of sorts to just be able to have fun with.
Within the last year we’ve moved into the 21st Century and started using QLab for sound effects and music. Can you talk about what we used to do and how QLab is an improvement?
Prior to Nutcracker 2022 we used CDs for music for each show, splitting act I and act II onto separate discs due to length. At intermission we would have to swap discs. QLab is audio software that runs on a Mac with a visual display showing us how much time is left in a track and more detailed information for each track. A nice feature of QLab is that it, by default, pauses after each song whereas with the previous method we would have to manually pause the CD player before it would play through to the next track. Sometimes it felt like we needed an extra arm or two to run the show, with one hand on the “GO” button for lights, another hand being able to turn the page of your script and then somehow figure out how to hit the “pause” button on the CD player. QLab is the industry standard for sound playback, used by many shows, so it was the logical program for us to embrace. The move to QLab was a new challenge for me as it’s a program that only runs on Mac, which is something I’m not entirely familiar with, but now that we’ve got it going it’s hard to imagine doing things any other way! It’s also nice to be able to use QLab for different themed preshow music playlists.
Thank you, Melanie, for telling us more about you and your work at the Reif Center.
[Editor’s note: This article was written by John Miller, Technical Director at the Reif Performing Arts Center in Grand Rapids. It is part of a series of monthly articles titled “Behind the Scenes”. All of his articles are available on the Reif Center’s website at https://www.reifcenter.org/reif-behind-the-scenes/. MACT would like to thank John and the Reif Center for allowing us to reprint this article. The Reif Center will be the location of MACT*Fest 2027.]