Last spring, at one of Rhee Gold’s one-day seminars for dance studio owners, I had an epiphany. I was there with my wife, Heather Walker, who’s the executive officer and artistic director of Jaztabal Dance; I handle the marketing and act as production stage manager. I have a degree in theatrical production; for more than 20 years, I’ve been responsible for making the school’s shows look professional. My epiphany? When Rhee mentioned using PowerPoint to enhance stage scenery, it was as if I had been struck by lightning.
In the past, the scenic elements of our school’s shows have included rental drops, professional lighting designs, projections, special effect lighting instruments, a mirror ball, and fog. All of them cost money and take a lot of time to set up and break down. Why had using PowerPoint never occurred to me? After all, I am a certified Microsoft Office User Specialist and corporate trainer who uses PowerPoint every day. Duh.
Here’s why PowerPoint is an excellent tool for recitals: You get tons of different looks; you don’t have to rent a backdrop and ship it back to the company; the setup and breakdown time is minimal; you can have photographs, graphics, animation, and movie-like transitions from scene to scene; and it is relatively easy to learn to use. Plus, you probably have it on your computer already.
Want to make your next show look like a Broadway production? Let’s start with the projected image and the necessary equipment. You will need a laptop computer, a VGA projector, and enough parallel-port cable to reach from the computer to the projector (a real issue when you have to hang it on a pipe). The theater we present our show in has an in-house VGA projector that fills about 70 percent of the cyc with the projected image. The challenge is that the angle of the projection from the booth is low, so that the bottom 25 percent of the image falls on the dancers. I handled this problem by letterboxing the image. Using PowerPoint’s Auto Shapes feature, I drew a rectangle that covered the bottom 25 percent of the slide image, then used a fill color of black. This masking technique turned the relatively square slide into a rectangle. It worked great!
For the school’s last recital, I used PowerPoint in two ways. The first half of the show was a full-story ballet, followed by jazz, tap, lyrical, and hip-hop pieces. For Alice in Wonderland, I needed to replace the rental drops that I ordinarily would have used, including a park scene, an enchanted forest, and a giant chessboard. Instead of the drops, I used photographs and projected them with PowerPoint. You can download millions of copyright-free photographs on the Internet or shoot your own photos on a digital camera and paste them in. It’s like magic—you can have any backdrop you want for any scene or dance.
For the second half of the show, I used a simple three-slide concept. Slide one said, “Next up,” followed by the names of the dancers scrolling up from the bottom. Slide two said, “In [song title].” The third slide was the background art for the piece. (Sometimes the background art changed, requiring several slides; for other pieces one slide sufficed.) Don’t reinvent the wheel here —save time by copying and pasting the names of the dancers from your show’s program into your slides.
PowerPoint has all kinds of bells and whistles, but I used the KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) formula. The look of the text slides was very theatrical, with white letters against a black background. I used only the “scroll from bottom” animation for consistency. The slides with names and titles were projected during a blackout, making them easy to read. For transitions I used the dissolve option, set on fast. I am a big believer in making transitions consistent throughout the show.
The backgrounds you can create for each dance are limited only by your imagination and your technical skill with the application. I suggest you start building an art library of images you like and think will work well. I started with skies and sunsets, then looked for textures and architectural photos. Do an Internet search using keywords for the types of images you want. Reams of them will come up—some are free, some have fees, some are copyright protected. You should be able to find things you like at no cost.
Animated images will spice up your slides. Check out these two great sites: www.gifanimations.com and www.animatedgif.net. (I even found an animated image of a spinning mirror ball, complete with the moving dots against a black background. That saved me 20 minutes of setting up the real thing.) I am partial to using animated bars and lines at the bottom of the slide with plain background art above it. That little bit of animation punches up the art without taking away from the dance. Remember, the backgrounds should enhance the overall visual impact of the performance but not detract from the most important element—the students. Understated is better than too flashy, in my opinion.
A few suggestions:
Pay attention to contrast. The art on the background should either contrast or complement the color scheme of the dancers’ costumes. My rule for lighting is that if the dancers are in dark costumes, I keep the background light; if they are wearing lighter colors I choose a black or dark-colored background.
If you want every slide to have a standard background (I use black), use the “slide master” feature to set it. Go to View/Master/Slide Master, make the background you want, then close it and you are ready to go from there.
In order to insert pictures or animations, simply copy and paste them from your library. Then adjust the size of the image as needed.
For an excellent overview of the flow of the show, go to View and scroll down to Slide Sorter. It lays out all the images like a movie storyboard.
For a very cool effect, have a picture or graphic scroll across and out of a slide’s frame. To create this, paste the image (a red star in the illustration) in the grey area outside of the slide image. Then set the custom animation to crawl from the opposite side. The star will appear at the right side of the slide, crawl across it and off the image on the left side, to finish where you placed it. Here’s the sequence: In Normal View, set the slide size at 50 percent. Using the Auto Shapes feature, draw a star (or whatever you want) and fill it with a color. Go to Slide Show/Custom Animation, then click on the part of the slide that you want to animate. Click on Add Effect/Entrance/Crawl In. Now select Start/On, then Direction/From Right, then Speed/Slow.
Remember, PowerPoint isn’t your only scenic option; make it part of a mix that incorporates a variety of elements. Some pieces look better against a traditional cyc with conventional warm or cool lighting. For example, no way would I glam up a Fosse piece with some hokey PowerPoint image. Know when to say no.
PowerPoint presentations take time if they’re done well. (I put in more than 40 hours on this year’s slide show.) Think about how much time is put into the dances, and give the students the professional image they deserve. For some of you, this may not be a do-it-yourself project. If you know the software and enjoy working with it, go for it; if not, hire a pro or ask if any parents have the time and skills to volunteer.
With PowerPoint projections as your scenic backgrounds, you can expect positive feedback. After last year’s dress rehearsal I overheard several of the dancers say they felt like stars when their names were up on the screen. That’s the kind of remark that makes every minute of effort worthwhile.