by Leigh Witchel
Now 85, Jennifer Tipton has lit Paul Taylor’s work since the start of her career in the 1960s, and her accolades include a MacArthur Award. If she wants to do a show where the lighting gets top billing, who would stop her?
It makes sense that an expert in light would be inspired by our main source of it, the sun, and the earth’s relationship to it. Tipton didn’t call “Our Days and Night” a performance, and it didn’t feel like one, but sometimes it felt like a show with the people and action removed. The announcement before the start gave you the best clue what to expect. “Enjoy the installation.”
The show began with a quick brilliant flash, then a single lunar beam, small and pale, that slowly grew. It went from sharp-edged to fuzzy as it took up the whole depth of the stage. The floor was dappled like leaves or water. Behind, on the cyclorama, a glowing sphere that seemed more the moon than the sun, was projected over a cutout mountain range designed by Michael Yeargan.
At first, there was no sound, and the quiet extended to the lighting. The moon did not move. Which meant that people were sitting in the audience, watching nothing in particular, occasionally coughing. A risky choice early on in a show that promised nothing except light.
Finally, the pool on the floor grew, then dimmed as choreographer Liz Gerring entered in the darkness. She stretched her hand from the dark into the lit area. Then her other hand. She moved her arms into the light.
Ain Gordon entered from the back. No amount of lighting could prepare for the temporal shock of seeing him, once the bright young thing of downtown theater, with gray hair, looking like his father, choreographer David Gordon. Both Gordon and Gerring were barefoot; Gerring wearing tights and a sleeveless T-shirt, Gordon in jeans and a denim shirt.
They met hands in the pool of light. He also moved his hands, then legs, into and out of the zone of lighting. Even if there was no dancing, the movement was carefully scripted and orchestrated to point out the areas of light and have bodies enter them partly or fully. It must have required significant rehearsal for Gordon and Gerring to hit their marks and commit all the cues to memory. The gradient of effects with slight variations made “Our Days and Night” feel like a wet tech, the stage rehearsals held principally for lighting and sound. Dancers, or their stand-ins, patiently pose as the designers and stage managers gauge and adjust the effects.
Gerring had been on the floor in front, watching. She moved into the center of the light as Gordon walked outside on the perimeter. She ran faster; he bent, partly in shadow. Bird and nature noises in Scott Lehrer’s sound design made the space seem like a campground at night. The two came together and Gerring draped over Gordon, to rain sounds. They sat on the ground as the projected moon waned, then walked to both sides.
Gordon spoke, about time and the universe. A monologue had been recorded that he augmented live. One effect of it was literal, his temporal ruminations. Another was simply sound to complement Tipton’s lighting. She wanted both.
As Gordon spoke, Gerring moved in a lit path at the middle. It dimmed and another path lit. Gordon rewrote Genesis: “A woman is made and then man is born.” Gerring moved, reaching, in each area of the stage. The moon became huge as the sky went lapis. Both left for a brief they pause, then returned.
Seagulls could be heard. Tipton created a lit X, where Gordon lay down in the center, and Gerring in one of the arms of the cross. The moon became a yellow sun and the sky went to sodalite. Even though the sky color was off, the sun suggested midday. Tipton referenced nature, but didn’t try to faithfully reproduce it.
As the seagulls called, Gerring and Gordon stretched. The X dissolved into a wash with orange side-lighting, and the two got up. Gerring took Gordon by the hand. With their arms round each others’ shoulders, they traveled across the stage. Gordon spoke again, talking about fall going into winter, but felt apocalyptic
“The cycle is ending, the light fades.”
The two moved into to the full light in the center and talked quietly. They moved for a bit, crawling skittering, and running, but then settled down to sit with their backs to us like Charlie Brown and Linus contemplating the heavens in “Peanuts” cartoons.
The moon turned blue, then pink into orange, and the pool of light in which they sat got tighter. The moon turned red and got smaller. In a performance, this could have been the clue and cue for the end, but this wasn’t a performance.
Machine noises began as the moon got redder. The noises got louder as the lights slowly dimmed. The humans left under cover of darkness and it became the moon’s show. Or was it the sun? After getting smaller, it supernovaed into a red giant, getting larger and larger, then the glow became softer and it slowly faded.
“Our Days and Night” ended not with a bang, but a whimper. The floor went back to the aqueous dappling from the opening. The giant red sun became a white moon again and the pool of light on the floor seemed to be its reflection. To the noises of a storm, the moon grew, then suddenly became smaller and extinguished. The pool of light took its time to fade away and diminish, and its extinguishing marked the end. There was applause, but for the lights. Gerring and Gordon did not come out for the curtain call.
The mixed messages of “Our Days and Night” were its most interesting quality. At times there was a hint of a narrative or a message, more often it was a catalog of situations and effects, a lighting designer’s cue sheet for a performance, with the performance largely removed. Gerring and Gordon were people, but as importantly they functioned as a canvas. For about an hour, we watched Tipton flexing.
Tipton wasn’t focused on a throughline or a build, rather she was exercising the possibilities of the form. The Jerome Robbins Theater in the Baryshnikov Arts Center didn’t seem to have a killer light plot, so she was doing what she could do in a typical theater, only without a dance to determine or constrain what she did.
At times you wished Tipton had pushed harder in one direction or the other, perhaps even eliminating the humans and forcing us to just watch the lights the entire time. Yet she seemed to feel that lights need to light something. However she chose to approach it, after nearly six decades she’s earned her time in the spotlight.
copyright ©2022 by Leigh Witchel
“Our Days and Night” – Jennifer Tipton
Baryshnikov Center, New York, NY
November 17, 2022
Cover: Liz Gerring and Ain Gordon in “Our Days and Night.” Photo credit © Maria Baranova.
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