Prism; Thelma; Awaiting change

Abstract

One of the pieces I am working on entitled Prism contains three sections: two ensemble sections and a solo section in the middle. The first and last sections will consist of an ensemble cast of seven dancers. The theme or inspiration for this piece is the properties of light. I am particularly interested in how light allows us to see color. White light contains all colors of the spectrum, when white light passes through a prism, the colors of the spectrum are separated and visible to the human eye. We perceive an object to be a specific color because the surface of that object has absorbed all the colors in the spectrum except the color that we see, the color that is reflected back to our eyes. This is why the sky is blue or the grass is green. When light is not present we see only black because there is no light, therefore no color. We perceive an object to be the color black because its surface is absorbing all the color, therefore no color is reflected back into our eye. For this piece, I am mainly concerned with what light allows us to see, how it reflects off surfaces and how it changes as it passes through crystal that has been cut into different shapes, a prism.