Whenever joining a performance of dancers in a theater I admired the moods, the lighting crew could achieve. I saw a show, where the dancers played with their own shadows that strong backlights created on a low-density curtain between the dancers and the audience. Lately I had the chance to shoot a dancer of the Basel Ballet and I wanted to let her (any myself) play with such shadows.
A low-density curtain (was ironed during hours…) and then hang up in the studio. Two bare bulb lamp heads created the very hard shadow on the curtain in front of the model.
The most difficult task was to illuminate the model without hitting the curtain - otherwise the strong graphical shadows would have been destroyed. Only by using two narrow soft boxes (30 x 120 cm, equipped with strip masks that turned them into 10 x 120 cm boxes) I could flag off the light precisely enough with two cardboards left and right of the curtain. The light still hit the model (who was standing just a few centimeters behind the curtain, even touching it sometimes) but the curtain was not effected at all.
