Setting a dance show in a corridor

BULLENGAROOK lighting and stage artist Keith Tucker was given an unusual brief for a new dance performance at this year's Melbourne International Arts Festival.

Unlike his previous assignments that included the fish on the Yarra installation during the Melbourne Commonwealth Games, Tucker had to ignore his usual theatrical lighting techniques with Corridor.

Corridor is a performance in a long passageway while the audience watches from the sides.

"The dancers use a very thin passageway with plain inverted-cone fluorescent lights while the audience is spread along the room," he said.

Tucker said choreographer Lucy Guerin wanted the show to be transferable to hospital and school passageways.

"A lot of the lighting has to be provided by the performers themselves who will have to turn the lights on and off and pass them during dances," he said.

Tucker has a long association with Guerin's work which has been commissioned around the world. But he also finds time to set up speakers and stages at local sporting presentations and school productions.

"I have a lot of fun doing what I do but it's great to do some community events to,'' he said.

Tucker said the corridor focused on the mental and physical pressures of living in an increasingly sophisticated world.

"The audience is literally looking at one another and there are great dynamics intertwined into the dance," he said.