ILLUMINATING CONTEMPORARY CHOREOGRAPHY: THE ROLE OF LIGHT DESIGN TECHNOLOGY IN DANCE CREATION AND PERFORMANCE IN BOLANLE AUSTEN PETERS’ MOREMI THE MUSICAL

Abstract

Background. Lighting in dance once served one job: to make the stage visible to the audience. Programmable fixtures, digital control systems and projection infrastructure have changed this, and light now works as a means of composition rather than a service to vision. The change reflects a wider movement of digital technology into live performance. Objective. This study examines light design technology as a constitutive element of contemporary dance and argues for its part in choreographic composition, narrative construction and affective communication. Methodology. The research combines theoretical synthesis with textual analysis of one production, Bolanle Austen-Peters' Moremi the Musical, staged at Terra Kulture in Lagos. Frameworks from performance studies, colour psychology, symbolic interactionism and human-technology interaction inform a four-stage reading of the publicly available recording, organised around chromatic coding, perception of space and time, performer-technology relations and audience response. Each observation is anchored to a recording timestamp for independent verification. Results. LED systems, intelligent consoles, projection mapping and AI-assisted virtual environments widen the choreographic palette, order perception and carry emotion and story without words. The production holds to an internally coherent chromatic system rooted in Yoruba performance aesthetics, distinguishing it from comparable Western stagings. Conclusion. Light design technology serves as a principal compositional language in contemporary dance. The study calls for sustained interdisciplinary research on access, durability and algorithmic accountability within AI-assisted practice, so the form remains open to practitioners working beyond well-resourced production settings.