What is a lightshow? (And notes on this article):

In the context of this article, a lightshow is a performance given with glowsticks to a small audience of one or several people which are physically close to the performer. Lightshow is a term that can be used loosely to refer to performances given with LED lights, assorted light toys, lasers, and a variety of other “light up“ items.

While the term lightshow is not listed in the dictionary, it is generally accepted that it is one word and not the two separate words “light” and “show”.

There are some things about lightshows, such as their use in conjunction with drugs, that will not be covered in the article. These things are not required to enjoy a lightshow.

Note that there will be no video tutorial pertaining strictly to lightshows.  If glowsticking is considered underground, we consider lightshows to be buried under an Egyptian tomb.

The article will focus on giving a lightshow to one person. We are sure all of our readers are bright enough to extend this knowledge to a group audience.

Please take note this article is poorly organized due to its inherent nature, however it is filled with priceless information.

Thoughts on performers and audience relationships:

We believe that in giving a lightshow, we as performers should always try to reflect beauty as our top priority. It is not a sport or competition, and we see no way it could ever be. Perhaps in better understanding lightshows, some glowstickers who are pro-battling and pro-competition will better understand why we at glowsticking.com hold our stance in these regards.

We believe that a lightshow is a very personal experience, that can be used to bond with a person. The performer is being trusted at a very close range holding sticks filled with chemicals and glass that can put out someone's eye. It really is not hard to start a conversation afterward; provided the music is not too loud. Please, do not put out someone's eye.

Why are you giving a lightshow? (Important):

Why are you giving a lightshow or planning to? What do you expect to achieve or receive from this experience? You probably have already given one if you are reading this article. Someone probably asked you for one. If not though, think about it. Then think about it again. Are you in the right place? Time? Dimension? Are you trying to express something? Entertain someone? Mesmerize? Mind Bend? A combination?

Lightshows should only be given when they are asked for, or after having received permission from the audience. Nothing is more annoying than someone flashing lights in your eyes while you are not in the mood. Say you are sleeping and your room-mate comes with a laser pointer to torment you. You would probably shank them right? The same goes for lightshows.

A word on individuality:

Every person is different. Tricks that effect one person strongly may have little or no effect on someone else. Lightshows are best started by quickly analyzing a persons reactions to simple movements. Follow their eyes as best as you can. Are they looking at your sticks? Are they looking at you? Adjust in accordance with how they are reacting.

Trails:

The trails being referred to are light trails left by glowsticks in motion. The reason why glowsticking is aesthetically pleasing is not because glowstick dancers are capable of making incredibly sharp and accurate circular movements, but because these sharp and accurate circles are followed by trails of amazing soothing colorful light! Symmetry is powerful. Round and straight, zig-zag, wavy gravy, ticking, stuttering, fuzzy. Use all kinds of adjectives to your advantage.

At the close range that lightshows are performed at, trails can practically draw out shapes if performed at a good speed. The skill of the performer in the accurate portrayal of these shapes is important. Yes, everyone and their mom has drawn a heart with glowstick trails. How about rainbows, clovers, and blue moons?

Expression:

Keeping in mind that visually perceived communication by your audience can convey feelings you are trying to communicate, how difficult would it be to express a scene in nature? Perhaps you have a combination of blue and white sticks- can you see the rain falling onto the calm water of a lake? Or perhaps your ultra high intensity red is a flower blooming over an 8 hour green? Perhaps the message will be completely lost to your audience. Perhaps they will catch your drift. Regardless, they will more than likely enjoy it. Do not be shy. A lightshow is an experience to be shared by both the performer and the audience.

Proximity:

Do not forget how close you are to your audience. This means your glowsticks, your arms, your face. Everything counts. Everything matters. Everything that your audience can see, feel, and smell. If you smell bad, go away. You could be ruining someone’s night. Remember, you are giving something that is supposed to be enjoyable to someone. If you smell a little bit, and you are not sure if they will notice, use best judgment, or body spray.

Perspective and focus:

Hopefully you are comfortable enough with glowsticks to focus your attention on your audience, as earlier mentioned. Here are some awkward instructions.

Use every bit of your knowledge of human response to try to read their mind. This is the most effective way to give a lightshow. The best performance can only come from a performer who knows their audience better than the audience knows themselves.

In a more normal sounding sense, just imagine seeing what they see. For an interesting read on motion perception please read this motion perception wikipedia article. Unless you have received lightshows yourself, it is very difficult to understand what effect you might be having on a persons perspective. For people that have not experienced lightshows first hand, it might be better to avoid giving a lightshow altogether, as you might be surprised or alarmed by your audiences reaction.

Here’s some interesting information for you to take into consideration before giving a lightshow:

1. Each eye sees independently.
2. Some people are color blind. Most are not.
3. Humans have an almost 180 degree forward-facing field of view.
4. Humans can also move their heads.
5. Don't forget these facts when performing a lightshow.

Hypnosis:

Controlling your audiences focus is an essential skill in giving lightshows. It really is not that hard, especially considering that they are looking your way already. When they turn away, don't think "Oh crap, they aren't paying attention to me." Instead, use this opportunity to set them up for more deception. If they are following your hands and the glowsticks, they are expecting. Human vision works largely by inference. Make sure they are wrong in their inference, and you will have them hypnotized. Their minds should be asking, "What just happened?" Leave no quarter! Have no mercy! Soon this thought will degrade into “ooh... oh....”

Use your body:

Most of the people you see giving lightshows do not use their whole bodies. While it is usually difficult to do so, when the situation permits, using your whole body is a good idea! Just do not forget you are performing for one person. Only their perspective counts. When dancing in a circle, try to acknowledge the 360 degrees around you. When performing for one person, remember the 360 degrees around them.

Use your face:

Using your face is also important. Exaggerated expressions yield funny results. Be careful which ones you choose. Know your audience. Do not risk ruining someone’s night. This can be done with subtlety or it can be done with some emphasis. Hide parts of your face, or focus the light on a certain part. One idea is to circle around your lips while mouthing words, or use the glowsticks to make a moving tunnel that allows only your eyes to be seen. Quite a dramatic effect, but very easy to perform!

Musicality and timing:

Musicality is also very important. It is likely that you and your audience will be listening to the same music or background, so integrate it to your show! While they might not think they notice, their subconscious mind will feel that everything is in sync. Life is just like that, every detail counts. You will have to choose your own balance between being on beat, and performing more complex light tricks.

Here are some important things to remember:

a. Do not repeat the same movement too long.
b. If you lean over a puddle (a large group of people on the ground) too long, your back will ache.
c. You should not keep a lightshow going longer than you feel it should.  If you think it is time to stop, it probably is a good idea to stop.

Continuance and the trance:

Continuance is very important. Dropping the glowsticks means breaking the trance. If you are going to take the risk of tossing and stalling, try your best to keep them going.

Continuance and the trance*:

If you drop one stick but still have a grip on the other one, use that stick to keep their focus while retrieving the lost stick. If the lost stick has gone to far away to achieve this, your flow is ruined. If this happens there is only so much you can do to re-acquire your audiences attention. One good idea is to keep an extra pair of un-cracked sticks in an easily accessible place, and upon losing the first pair immediately crack the new pair. Your audience may think the loss of your first pair was planned and their attention to your lightshow may even be increased.

Non-continuance:

Think hard about your trails. Consider the following: you are moving a stick and decide to freeze it in front of your face. Imagine this from your viewers perspective. What if you had stopped the stick vertically, so it stops behind your other hand, and the trail disappears? When you move your hand out of the way, the stick will be frozen in the expected position. Now what if when you moved your blocking hand out of the way, the frozen stick was not there? Or perhaps it is spinning between your fingers? This all happens in the blink of an eye.

Advanced techniques:

There are a plethora of advanced techniques that can be used to your advantage when giving a lightshow. These techniques will not be listed in this article due to many reasons, the main being that they take a long time to explain and a lot of practice to be able to pull off successfully. Some of these techniques involve using more than two sticks.

Advanced techniques*:

The best advice you can be given in this area is to receive lightshows yourself and borrow ideas from what you see others doing. Expand on those ideas to make them your own. If you happen to be walking around at a party and see someone giving an amazing lightshow, ask them if they will give you one. Spark up a conversation with them and see if they will share techniques with you.

Above all, remember that your imagination is your only limit.

Multiple performers*:

In some cases it can be beneficial to the audience to have multiple performers conducing a single light show. In these cases extreme care should be taken to make sure that each performer is adding to the flow of the show and not taking away from it. Working together can be very beneficial in the fact that concepts and ideas can be carried out that would otherwise have been impossible with only one performer.

It is conceivable to have up to four performers giving one lightshow. The best way to achieve this is to have the audience sitting in a chair with space cleared on all sides of it. Two performers can be in front of the audience while two more can be behind the audience. One of the two in front should be standing while the other is crouching down, and likewise behind the audience. This allows each performer the ability to move freely and offers a clear view of each to the audience.

It can not be stressed enough that each performer needs to be working in conjunction with the other performers. For instance, if a performer in front has a fluid movement going to the beat of the music, it is not advisable for a performer in the back to be going to a different beat that does not fluidly link up with what the performer in the front is doing. Each performer should play off of what the other performers are doing at any given time.

As a basic example, let us say that performer 1 in the front has the audience hypnotized by a repetitive movement of his or her blue sticks. If performer 2 in the back has much brighter orange sticks and suddenly comes in with them, the hypnosis of the audience to the blue sticks will be lost. This is not to say that it may not cause a wonderful reaction from the audience, but the chance of breaking the hypnosis is very great.

A better approach would be for the performer in the back to wait for the performer in the front to do a movement of the sticks that breaks the repetitive cycle of what he or she was doing. At this point it would be very beneficial for the very bright orange sticks to suddenly come around from behind the audience in a sweeping arc across the front of the audiences face. This sweeping arc could easily set up a chance for performer 3 (who is in the front crouching down, but up until this point not in focus of the audience) with a pair of green sticks to pull them out of hiding and go into a new series of movements. It would not at this point be advisable for performer 2 with the bright orange sticks or performer 1 with the blue sticks to continue pulling focus from the audience, but instead let the orange drift out of the peripheral vision of the audience, thus creating an illusion that the orange light has dissolved into a pattern of green.

A good tip to remember is that the performers in the back are there specifically to accentuate the performances being made from the front. Due to the positioning of the performers in the back it is impractical for many moves to be accomplished without their arms touching the head of the audience.

During the time the performers that are behind the audience are not accentuating movements of the performers in the front, it can be beneficial to the audience to add stimuli of a non-visual nature to the audience; i.e. rubbing their head or shoulders, dragging their fingers ever so slightly across the sides of the audiences face or temples, and blowing light gusts of air on the audiences neck.

It is important to remember however that even stimuli such as these need to be done in fluid unison with the performances of those in the front. It also can not be stressed enough that even in the case of applying stimuli such as these, over-doing them can be a hindrance to the performance as a whole. Subtlety is the key.

A case study:

During a study that Teardrops and Ginseng were working on, they discovered that certain movements had distinct effects on the viewer. One strong clear movement that they studied made the audience feel as if "the stage were being cleared." The audience reported that emotions were washed away, positive or negative, and it set the stage for the next act. It might be a good idea to study the effects of a few movements on your own time; perhaps cross comparing results with other members of your scientific lightshow network.

A case study on potential mishap or “rioting”:

Teardrops and Ginseng also discovered that if a lightshow is performed too well, an audience could begin rioting. Performers beware of your surroundings before beginning a lightshow. The incident mentioned occurred with several encores, several riots, and several claims by the audience that no such further rioting would occur. Although not severe, it is just one of many things about lightshows that less experienced performers should be made aware of.

Conclusion:

1. Your imagination is your only limit.
2. Lightshows can be crazy, be careful.
3. Have fun…and more importantly, make sure your audience is having fun!

- Article written by Ginseng. *Ammendments by Ph0toN.