Nicole Pearce Design Portfolio

Dance Europe

The aesthetically delightful design elements, with costumes by Michelle Jank and lighting by Nicole Pearce, and with an imposing set (by Barton, Jank, & Pearce) comprises a metres-high white canopy cascading down in waves, serving as a heavenly backdrop to the action.
-March, 2011 on Still Life

Time Out Chicago

The Muir’s final few, where one woman kneeling alone drops her gaze as darkness descends. (Once again Nicole Pearce nails it with the lighting.)
- by Zachary Whittenburg, February 2011

NY Times

Here, the lighting, by Nicole Pearce, created an otherworldly glow of silver and black..
-by Gia Kourlas, Dec 20, 2010 on Busk

TheaterMania

Lighting designer Nicole Pearce and sound designer Bart Fasbender also deserve praise for their contributions to how the war is visually and aurally reflected within the production.
-by Dan Bacalzo, Nov 18, 2010 on Edgewise

Light & Sound

Nicole Pearce's lighting design may be her finest achievement yet; she bathes the stage in faintly disturbing color washes (both pastel and saturated), transforms the space violently with spinning patterns, then snaps back to quotidian reality in nanoseconds.
- by David Barbour, September 13, 2010 on underneathmybed

Time Out New York

Untouched is lit such that it appears we are looking onto a stage through its back wall. A heavy red curtain hangs, just partly opened, upstage. The floor is lit by shafts of light from beyond this curtain. There’s the sense another house, another audience, is back there sitting quietly, with only a small window onto the action we see clearly, thus, the work is our secret. - - by Zachary Whittenberg, June 4, 2010

Time Out Chicago
Nicole Pearce’s lighting is more intriguing than any design the Joffrey’s premiered in years.
-by Zachary Whittenburg, April 29, 2010

Village Voice
...they come and go easily in an open field defined by Nicole Pearce's lighting
- Written August 25, 2009

Variety
The deep woods of Illinois seem to stretch into infinity, thick with vegetation, ablaze in fall colors and vibrating with the suggestive sounds of hunters and animal life -- a nice illusion advanced by Nicole Pearce's painterly lighting. - By Marilyn Statsio Setember 8, 2008

The New York Times
Nicole Pearces wide range of modern lighting effects, sometimes silhouetting the dancers and shining lights at the audience, often lighting the dancers from new angles, kept changing the drama.
- Written December 18, 2007

The New York Times
For those of us who experience the Village as one crazily overpriced boutique after another, what a world this conjures: one of shadowy bars and tousled beds, in rooms decorated only by light striping the walls through shuttered blinds.

Noteworthy are Rachel Hauck’s spare set, Nicole Pearce’s lighting and a sound score
by Jill B C DuBoff... Claudia La Rocco, October 2007

The Village Voice
On BAM's bare stage in Nicole Pearce's excellent lighting, with dancers crouching and lurking out of the action where the wings usually hang, the tension between safety and daring becomes tauter. – by Deborah Jowitt March 24, 2006

The New York Times
"All Fours," a dance set to Bartok whose sections for white-clad performers are endlessly fascinating, as is Nicole Pearce's lighting. – by Jennifer Dunning March 24, 2006

The Village Voice
Nicole Pearce's lighting strikes forcefully too. A red backdrop suddenly turns deep blue, and the stage chills; then the red returns. Some changes last only seconds. – by Deborah Jowitt June 15, 2004

The New York Times
The wildness of the first and last movements of the five-part score is translated into a raucous outburst for eight couples in black. These are contrasted with the three middle movements for two couples in either white or gray, depending on the boldness of Nicole Pearce’s lighting. – by Anna Kisselgoff June 10, 2004

Variety
Consistent invention and commitment mark Dickstein and team -- especially composer Vijay Iyer and lighting designer Nicole Pearce -- as talents to watch… All three parts are stunningly lit by Pearce, who avoids both self-consciousness and excessive literalism in sculpting the dance space while giving the narrative realities their due. – Bob Verini

The New York Times
The title "Little Willy" alludes to his sexual attributes, but the play is not as glib as that would suggest. It sticks for the most part to the agreed-upon facts, which give the hourlong show, lit noir-like on a mostly empty stage, a sense of authenticity, but by refusing to speculate about what we don't know… - By Jason Zinoman

Theatremania.com
Using nothing more than long, billowing panels of silk and mesmerizing lighting design by Nicole Pearce, the talented ensemble swirl around the innocent and forlorn young Bibi…
- Barbara & Scott Siegel

Show Buisness Weekly
Nicole Pearce’s ghostly light design is at once strikingly beautiful and unbearably terrifying. – by Sean O’Donnell

Nytheatre.com
For this world premiere, Ma-Yi Theater Company has put together a splendid production… and evocative lighting by Nicole Pearce. – by Martin Denton

danceviewwest
Throughout All Fours, Nicole Pearce’s lighting suddenly falls dark, or flashes intense red. The blackness is unpredictable, swift as death. The sensation of shock is one we all, right now, know too well. The chorus is driven to a helpless fear. Your faith in the human will to find strength and calm in crisis is not strengthened. – by Rachel Howard

The Brooklyn Rail
... the image of vigor and exhaustion, rendered sculpturally by the dramatic and spare lighting of Nicole Pearce. – by MJ Thompson

Dance – Ballet Magazine
Dancer’s break off from the group and relationships form before they return to the whole. Nicole Pearce’s superb lighting simply adds to the feeling… - by David Mead

San Francisco Chronicle
…with briskly articulated lighting by Nicole Pearce, the dance is marked by high contrasts. – by Steven Winn

offoffonline.com
A huge projection screen fills the back wall of Clint Ramos’s austere set , and Egon Kirincic’s video design combines nicely with Nicole Pearce’s pristine lighting to create an evocative , and rather ethereal, backdrop. by Amy Krivohlavek