Ellis Wood Dance Sets

Rawlings architects pc has designed a series of sets for Ellis Wood Dance. These pieces serve to reinforce and enhance the choreography of this all-female dance company while also providing visual focal points on stage.

All of the designs for Ellis Wood Dance, an all-female modern dance company based in New York City, support and emphasize the dance while working within tight budget, time, and logistic constraints.

For “Timeless Red”, a platform of rigging piping and Plexiglas create a perch from which Ms. Wood beckons and interacts with the other members of the company.

In “Joan in the Mud”, a suspended wooden platform (somewhere between earth and sky) trembles and serves as an elevated performance datum for this piece inspired by Joan of Arc.

“Hurricane Flora”, a piece with references to the 4 elements, employs a set consisting of a projected moving image by Rawlings architects pc and original score by Daniel Bernard Roumain. The images are projected on the upstage scrim cyclorama, and in a later section, baskets of fresh cut flowers become an integral element, hurled in a polychromatic explosion. The original videography and editing were compiled over the course of a year in close collaboration with Ellis Wood and with the musical score. The set was conceived as easily transportable video wallpaper and debuted at Dance Theater Workshop in the fall of 2004.