#Apollo cloud mak a copy series#

#Apollo cloud mak a copy series#

We have all experienced this sort of illusion at a pictorial level when looking at shaded patterns, like the rhomboid mosaic at Antioch, which we instinctively translate into a series of cubes. It suggested depth shapes lit and shaded to reveal form an organic variation of tone a harmonious sense of proportion. Or at least, I knew that what I was looking at was a clever combination of lighting, paint and dry ice but I could not shake the conviction that it was tangible reality.ДЄs in all good illusions, the scene worked because it followed rules that we perceive as structuring our visual world. The light appeared to diffuse from some distant source, the moon behind a cloud perhaps, and the effect of it through the semi-transparent brushwork produced an uncanny impression: I thought it was real. At the Royal BalletвЂ™s recent production, using John MacfarlaneвЂ™s designs from 1985, the mottled foliage and dark forms of the trees extended (or so it seemed) up and beyond the frame of the stage, fading to darkness as they went out of sight.

There are many ways of representing forests on stage, but in Giselle the trees are traditionally painted as silhouettes on a cloth that is lit from behind to give an eerie glow. The spirit of Giselle, a village girl, returns to protect her lover Albrecht from the Wilis, shades of young women who died before marriage. The second act of the ballet Giselle (1841) takes place in a woodland late at night.