Cris

There are only a few colors I've consistently come back to through 20 years of dance lighting design, covering 50+ full-length concerts and literally hundreds of individual pieces. One of those is the immensely flexible R99. This color is often poo-poo'd as a beginner's choice or a novelty color in Rosco's lineup, but I say it's one of the most expressive and useful colors in the library.

These pictures capture pretty well the range R99 gives me. In Apart/A Part (Chor. Deborah Damast), exclusive use of R99 gives a beautiful sepia tone without killing the deep blue and red dresses of two key dancers. Yet when used in contrast with R3802 in (Our) Last Indulgences (also Deb Damast), the R99 wall wash reads as gold - this is a pair I use often. Used as background in counterpoint to dimmed no-color specials, the R99 cyc light in Tapestry (chor. Jenny Brown) helps the eye perceive the specials as white again. And, finally, used entirely on its own, in Kol Nidre (chor. Renata Cheliskowa), the R99 shins read as a slightly pink warm glow. (R99 also washes the wall upstage, dimly, in order to keep the dancers' unlit side from flattening into the back wall.)

In a world of supersaturated movers and LEDs, where it seems every dance event is lit either in crayola colors or plain washes of cold white light, R99 has been a hallmark of my designs - illuminating and revealing without destroying skin tone, providing mood and flavor without overspicing the look.