Best lighting designs for dance | 2011 in review

Year in review 2011 | Dance | Best lighting design

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  Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group: The Good Dance – dakar/brooklyn

  Photo: Antoine Tempé355.da_.thegooddance.jpg150399351
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  Jo Shapland in the Llanarth Group’s Told by the Wind

  Photo: Ace McCarron325.da.LlanarthGroupWind05.jpg147692872
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  Julia Rhoads, left, and Meghann Wilkinson in The Better Half

  Photo: William Frederking348.da.TheBetterHalf1.jpg150030213
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  AXIS Dance Company

  Photo: Courtesy of AXIS Dance Company355.da_.axisdancecompany.jpg150399334
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  Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan in Water Stains on the Wall

  Photo: Liu Chen-hsiang348.da_.cloudgate.jpg149963155
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  Dancers improvise at S.R. Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology during Kinetic Sculptures at the 2011 Dance Improvisation Fest

  Photo: Zachary Whittenburg355.da_.danceimprovisationfest.jpg150507076

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Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group: The Good Dance – dakar/brooklyn

Photo: Antoine Tempé

“Light is the water that dancers swim in,” goes a quote I once heard, attributed to the choreographer Choo-san Goh. Dancers drowned in gorgeous designs this year, both new and revived, in venues big and small. The most memorable, in no particular order, were by the following folks (click through to read our article about or review of each show):

• Jonathan Belcher and Carrie Wood, for Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group’s The Good Dance – dakar/brooklyn, March 31–April 2 at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago

• Michael Schmelling, for Let us think of these things always. Let us speak of them never. by Every house has a door, February 9–13 at the MCA Stage

• Nicole Pearce, for Mark Morris Dance Group’s The Muir, February 25–27 at the Harris Theater

• Randall G. Chiarelli, for the Joffrey Ballet’s production of Ronald Hynd’s The Merry Widow, February 16–27 at the Auditorium Theatre

• Heather Gilbert, for Lucky Plush Productions’ The Better Half, October 27–November 6 at the MCA Stage

• Francesca Bourgault, for Julia Rae Antonick’s Commissura, April 22–30 at the Fine Arts Building

• Heather Basarab, for AXIS Dance Company’s Light Shelter, by David Dorfman, November 19 and 20 at the Auditorium Theatre

• Jared B. Moore, for Luna Negra Dance Theater’s March 12 program at the Harris Theater, of works by Fernando Hernando Magadan, Gustavo Ramírez Sansano and Luis Eduardo Sayago Alonso

• Jacob Snodgrass, for CDI/Concert Dance, Inc.’s 30th Anniversary Program, April 1 and 2 at Northeastern Illinois University; and for Khecari’s The Clinking, December 15 and 16 at Hamlin Park Fieldhouse

• Kevin Rechner with Priscilla Guy and Nathan Ruyle, for Utopia Parkway by Chris Aiken and Angie Hauser, June 18 at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, during the first annual Dance Improvisation Fest

• The sun with Mies van der Rohe and Magdalena Abakanowicz, for Kinetic Sculptures at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Crown Hall and AGORA SCORE in Grant Park, June 12 and 19, during the first annual Dance Improvisation Fest

• Dan Howe, for The Open Space Project’s “DIVE,” March 18 and 19 at the Den

• Lulu W. L. Lee, for Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan’s Water Stains on the Wall, October 28 and 29 at the Harris Theater

• Ace McCarron, for the Llanarth Group’s Told by the Wind, May 20 and 21 at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago