Clifton Taylor is the Production and Lighting Designer for Dance, the Spirit of Cambodia. His lighting designs are in the repertories of American Ballet Theatre, Scottish National Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Houston Ballet, Washington Ballet, Maggio Danza in Florence, Italy, Sardono Dance Theatre of Indonesia, and the Ballet Company of Rio de Janeiro, among many others. Other recent work includes the United States tours of Forgiveness, a full-length theater work by Chen Shi-Zheng for the Asia Society, new works for Monte/Brown Dance, Buglisi/Foreman Dance, and the Juilliard School’s Dance Division. He has designed for opera and theater companies including the New York City Opera/National Company, American Conservatory Theater (San Francisco), Dallas Theater Center, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Cleveland Playhouse (resident lighting designer), the Pasadena Playhouse, and ACT (Seattle). With these and other companies, he has traveled extensively throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas.

For more information on Cambodia and the Cambodian dance troupe, visit the Dance, the Spirit of Cambodia website.

How did you initially become involved in this program and where did your interest in Cambodia start?

I was invited to become a part of this production. I have a long-standing history of working in Asia, with different Asian companies, from other countries in Southeast Asia. But this is my first experience with Cambodia.

What were your impressions of Cambodia? How long were you there?

I was there for a week in February, and I saw the company perform. Then I also took a trip to see Angkor Wat for several days. It’s hard to put my impressions into words, because I think more visually, so I hope my impressions are there on the stage. That’s what I try to do.

So how do you contextualize the show to an American audience, given that Americans know very little about Cambodia?

Well, we went in several simultaneous directions to contextualize it for our audiences. The most obvious is that I took a lot of photographs while I was there, as did other people on the team. We distilled those photographs to provide a big part of the visual production. We’re projecting photographs as backgrounds. And that’s one way of contextualizing-- that there are actual photographs in the show. Another way is we’re presenting these performances on a Western style stage, and it’s different from how the dances were conceived. Some of the dances that we’re showing were conceived for the court, and some are folk dances, and so we’re putting all of these dances into a different framework.

How did you choose the photographic images that you decided to include?

I can say what they’re not. They’re not icons for the dances. So any time it seemed like we were choosing a photograph that became an icon for the dance, I tried to steer away from that. What I hope that they do is provide a framework for the dance, in the same way that a frame surrounds a beautiful painting in a gallery. The frame tells you a lot of things about the painting. It tells you about the period of the painting, and the intended audience of the painting, whether it’s gold and ornate, or carved and very simple. Maybe there’s no frame at all, and that’s a choice as well. I think that’s what scenery is as well. The beautiful painting is the dance, and the frame is what scenery can do.

Can you talk a little bit about the floor? Where did you get the idea for that?

The floor is a synthesis of impressions that I left Cambodia with. It’s a tile work floor. We painted it onto a cloth, but it’s intended to look like laid tile. When I was at the palace in Phnom Penh, I saw a tile floor that could have been used for performances, but it’s also just a beautiful tile floor. And it just got me thinking about what one big difference between Cambodian dance and western dance is: that they can dance on this very hard tile floor. It’s a very strange idea for a dance person because we’re into soft floors. Our modern dancers dance barefoot, but always on a very soft floor. So this is very different. So the idea of tile came right away. Also, the tile in the palace is extremely detailed, and would be very, very expensive to produce here. So I thought, let’s make a tile floor.

The next question is what’s the shape of it, what’s the pattern. And then after I went to the palace, I went to see Angkor Wat and that’s a singular experience, when you go to some place like that, it’s really life-changing for anyone who is lucky enough to go. It got me thinking about the meaning of Ankgor Wat, and how it relates to Cambodian culture now. Visiting Angkor Wat was such a strong experience. I thought Angkor Wat is something that definitely has to be involved in the scenic concept of the show. So the tile work pattern that I chose is actually kind of a representation of the ground plan of Angkor Wat, so there’s a central section, and there are four surrounding sections in the corners. So that’s one kind of impression of it. I changed the color program of the tiles that I saw in the palace to fit with my idea of what this work could be. I want people to think sometimes it’s a rice field, and sometimes it’s a forest floor, so it’s more than just a palace floor, it’s mutable.

Why is this project important for you to work on and why is it important for Americans to learn about Cambodian dance and to keep this tradition going?

The story of who these people really are and what they’ve gone through in the last 30 years is so extraordinary, I don’t know how you could not be moved by that. And when you know the story, I think one has to give oneself over to it.

AsiaSource interview conducted by Michelle Caswell.