Performance Reviews
“Electric god Joe Levasseur contributes his lightning.”
“Joe Levasseur’s lighting uses color in elegant, often symbolic ways.”
“Mr. Barr has created a quietly magical theatrical environment, enhanced by the delicate work of Joe Levasseur, the lighting designer, and Joel Mellin, the composer. This environment is simple, clear and just right, much like Ms. Melnick’s fluidly precise movements within it.”
“In “my imagination lives in the dark, but charlotte’s imagination lives in the forest,” Anna Sperber, in consultation with the master lighting designer Joe Levasseur, drew audiences into a magical shadow land.”
“...due largely to Joe Levasseur's extraordinarily beautiful lighting, which flares and glows in unexpected bursts or swells of light and dark across the stage, lending a poetic mystery to the explosive martial-arts kicks and undulating bodies of Ms. Lin and Ms. Hsiang.”
“The contrast between the loud, rhythmic music and the sensuous deliberateness of the movement, etched by the burnished lighting (by Joe Levasseur and Mr. Jasperse), is simply gorgeous.”
“A lighthearted collaboration, performed by two dancers (Benjamin Asriel and Ashleigh Leite), a video designer (Keith Skretch) and a lighting designer (Joe Levasseur), ... In an instant, everything we saw — and what we thought it meant — took on a greater meaning, about perception. “
“It’s something of a cheerful mess, framed by John Jasperse and Joe Levasseur’s glamorous lighting.”
“And, at the end of the evening, while Joe Levasseur’s excellent lighting goes from bright and warm to chill, the whole cast gradually joins in the simple, repeated foot action that once drove Farber crazy and, in retrospect, jump-started Mapp’s career.”
“In “Misuse liable to prosecution,” presented in October as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, John Jasperse used the paradox of his own artistic identity — a successful choreographer without the means to create work consistently — as the starting point for his piece. None of the sets, props or costumes, he decided, would cost any money.
What resulted was a remarkable work of tough and fragile beauty, characterized by Mr. Jasperse’s spare, detailed movement, and set amid an extraordinary collaged landscape of hundreds of wire hangers and empty plastic bottles, all given an amazingly new abstract identity through Joe Levasseur’s beautiful lighting.”
“...another ace lighting design by Joe Levasseur...”
“But this same deliberateness also abstracted their motion; the performers took such time and care with simple tasks (walking toward each other, standing) that they seemed at times to absent themselves from their actions. This paradoxical, lonely sense of vacant intimacy was heightened by the subtle progressions of Jon Moniaci’s score and particularly by Joe Levasseur’s lighting, which gave the sense of days, and then seasons, passing unheeded beyond Ms. Gill’s charged domestic sphere.”
“ Toward the end, both performers simply walk off, and the lights dim, as swelling music overtakes the traffic sounds. The quality of this darkening light (by Joe Levasseur) is as beautiful as a painting, but the effect — the music, the spatial emptiness — is pure theater.”
“Joe Levasseur’s lighting design, controlled by the performers, subtly alters this rich space, now highlighting a poster of Nijinsky in an exposed shaftway, now pooling around the men as Mr. Moniaci carefully manages feedback levels, and Mr. Granoff noodles across the floor like a shrimp curling across wet rock.”
"Mr. Jasperse’s ... sensitivity is matched by Hahn Rowe’s live, delicate score, which includes everything from a psaltery to a laptop, and the lighting design by Joe Levasseur and Mr. Jasperse." / “(The lighting, by Joe Levasseur and Mr. Jasperse, is a consistent marvel.)”
"...stunning lighting design by Joe Levasseur,"
"Lighting designed by Joe Levasseur picks out dancers on the edge of the stage, sitting and watching in the shelter of the walls and changing clothes. Episodically, with no seeming through line or overall structure, they enter and leave, drop in and out, taking off and putting on spangly sweaters, swishing in glittering skirts, all gold and shimmery, the work of a designer called “Icon.” A sound score by Peter Kerlin and Joe Moniaci is as unobstrusive as the light. Indeed, the refined music, impeccable lighting, and a gloomily suggestive set — devised by the choreographer with Jeff Larson and the lighting designer — give the whole a certain gloss. The space is used thoughtfully, and the production values are excellent."
"And partly the piece’s success owes something to her nondancing collaborators: the onstage musician Chris Peck; Jennifer Goggans, who designed the costumes with Ms. Spradlin; the video artist Glen Fogel; and the lighting designer Joe Levasseur. They are accomplished professionals whose work dovetails with Ms. Spradlin’s vision into a convincing whole."
"Gradually, the subtle lighting (by Joe Levasseur, who made major contributions to both works) reveals they are in a world of snow."
"Joe Levasseur's lighting—hands-down, the most effective design I've ever seen in an indie theatre production—defines the space spectacularly and guides us, through darkness, to wherever the next mirage is about to materialize."
"The lighting, by Jasperse and Joe Levasseur favors the sculpture, bathing it lovingly. Low side light illuminates the dancers’ feet and the overall rig looks rather spare and European, with a few large solo sources in the upstage corners for backlight."
David Barbour
"extensive and excellent light design
