Clifton Taylor, who has "been there" as a guest LD at dance festivals where companies perform in quick succession, has noted the constraints and compromises often imposed on visiting lighting designers. For the Fall for Dance festival at New York City Center, by contrast, "we have done whatever we can to say ‘Yes' and to answer the companies' needs for seven years. We hung some companies' specific light plots. We put up huge sets – like a full trampoline set for Elizabeth Streb in 2004 – and we pulled down these sets during a pause. We put up trapeze rigs; took away all the masking. We want the audience to see the real vision of the companies. So to accomplish this, the light plot is necessarily large. We have nearly 40 moving lights and nearly 60 scrollers on various kinds of units so that we can do a lot of color changing and different focusing. If the moving lights cannot cover what the company needs for special focuses, we hang additional lights wherever they are needed. For instance, this year, for one 10-minute solo by Emanuel Gat, we hang 37 lights. In the past, we rented 10K lights or different kinds of moving lights like Martin 2Ks when somebody needed them for specific reasons. Russell Maliphant Company did a beautiful piece in the festival this year. Lighting for the piece was done with a 20,000-lumen projector hung facing straight down over the stage, and everything else was taken away. The projection was timed to the dancer, who followed the projection. We rented the Catalyst system and the projector for this piece."
-Clifton Taylor, interviewed by Tuce Yasak for "PLSN Interview," April 2011
