SideLight

A Curated Blog by Adin Walker

Light that beams onto performers from the side is often said to be the best kind of lighting for dance. Unlike a spot light, sidelight does not capture and constrain an artist's body onstage. But rather, sidelight finds bodies onstage, gives them the space to breathe and take up space, and brings those artists into a certain kind of focus for an audience that emphasizes their three-dimensionality and humanity. It shapes the light on the artist in such a way as to remind me of my own three-dimensionality – that my own body carries its own, layered universe.

SideLight is an evolving collection of my own critical writing on art, as well as creative and critical writing by collaborators from vast disciplines. The focus here is on writing that examines how art or any particular creative subject of intrigue reveals deeper things about ourselves and to ourselves. The SideLight point of view embraces writing from our personal, material selves to reveal the perhaps hidden dimensionality and humanity of a subject that only the writer who both watches and illuminates can see – and then what that very process of writing reveals about our own embodied and mysterious universe.