Hearing Light: A Conversation with Christina Giannelli
Christina Giannelli
by Nancy Wozny
January 6, 2009
Dance Source Houston's own executive director Christina Giannelli takes the limelight this Saturday at the Hobby Center's Zilkha Hall in Focus, with her collaboration with composer Anthony Brandt, co-founder and artistic director of Musiqa. Giannelli sheds some light on the intersection between seeing and sound below.
Dance Source Houston: What came first the light, the music or the idea?
Christina Giannelli: The idea. Anthony Brandt approached me several years ago about a collaboration. From there we launched into a year of conversations on light and music, which culminates in Focus.
DSH: What do music and light have in common? Both are ethereal arts.
CG: Yes, they are intangible. For centuries, people have been trying to make a correlation between light and music, trying to map colors onto tones. There were many examples in the 18th -19th century of “color organs” that produced sound and light. I have always resisted the idea that a particular note should match a color.
DSH: What was your common ground then?
CG: We talked about the common vocabulary used to describe both; color, intensity, rhythm, shading; how sometimes they mean the same thing and sometimes they refer to something completely different. For example the words rhythm and punctuation are used in a similar way to describe sound and theatrical lighting, in terms of they can change in time. Still, there are some fundamental differences between the way our ears hear and our eyes see.
DSH: Such as?
CG: You cannot comprehend music in a moment; music unfolds over time. In fact, the ear is really listening to the change in pitch, that's how it knows something has changed, while the eye sees in a snapshot, although part of a series, each one can stand on its own.
DSH: Taking into account the similarities and differences, how did you find common ground?
CG: We gravitated to the concepts of intensity, density, pattern and blending and how those clarify or distort both musical and visual images. Musical themes are explored in several different ways and the lighting will act as a visual corollary. Thus the title Focus as Anthony actually blurs and then defines various themes or pixilates them by passing them from one instrument to another. It is a very intriguing piece of music!
DSH: What did you learn from collaborating with a composer?
CG: It was a marvelous opportunity to step back and really think about what I do day in and day out. I came to realize what a visually oriented person I am; vision is my dominant sense and light is my overriding metaphor. I tend to respond to music through my body, I am hard pressed not to sway or bob about when I am listening to music, which may have something to do with why I am drawn to lighting dance. But to really hear the nuances of music I need to close my eyes.
DSH: Will you be lighting the musicians or the space?
CG: Light needs something to bounce off of in order for us to see it. Musicians tend to be concerned with shadows on their music and hate to have lights shining in their eyes when they look to the conductor for their cues, so they need to be lighted with care, I love beams of light in the air, but that takes smoke, which doesn’t work well for musicians either, I don’t want to create distractions that will affect their performances. So I have created a bit of an installation using a series of translucent scrims to catch the light.
DSH: I am curious about the process of working together. A composer can easily give you a piece of music to work with but you need a theater to show your stuff.
CG: True, Tony was able to give me some computer simulations of his score, but even so he needed to describe the nuances that the computer could not evoke. We worked through a series of conversations; I described what I planned to do. I have created my sort of technical score that helps me structure my ideas and will guide me when I get into the theater, that's where the rubber hits the road. I go in with my notes and pre-written cues for the crew, knowing the general shape of things but I will have to make adjustments based on the actual conditions, just as the conductor and musicians will adjust their performances to the sound of the room. I also leave room for last minute inspiration and will adjust a color or the intensity when it is all assembled.
DSH: What surprised you the most in the process?
CG: I had set myself a course of study planning to delve into new findings in the psychology of vision but ended up spending my time on natural phenomena and the physics of light. I’m enthralled with sunlight and atmospheric effects.
DSH: What is your hope for Focus?
CG: I hope that the audience will have a deeper and broader experience of the music, that they will be able to fully immerse themselves in it as I have been in the studio rehearsals.
Musiqa presents Focus on Saturday, January 9th at 7:30 pm at Hobby Center, Zilkha Hall, Call 713-315-2525 or visit. www.thehobbycenter.org
Christina Giannelli is a recipient of an Individual Artists Grant Award. This grant is funded by the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance.
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Toni Valle, Project Director
713-224-3262 / toni@houstondance.org
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