Set design elevates the flow of movement in concert dance

Concert dance isn’t just about bodies moving onstage. It’s also about the set, which adds tonal mood and helps frame the dance work.

Set design typically acts as temporary architecture, creating the illusion of a fully realized world. A set’s stillness can counterbalance the dancers’ motion, framing the choreographer’s vision through symbolism and metaphor.

Smaller venues or companies may not use sets and instead prioritize costumes or lighting. But a striking set design can cement a work in our memory by helping to tell a story or supporting the choreographer’s conceptual spine.

In many ways, the set functions as a visual language in dance, communicating through shape, color, texture and feeling.

Designer Erik Paulson employed a vintage grandfather clock face as a central motif in Collide Theatrical Dance Company’s production of “Romeo and Juliet” last season. The set highlighted the urgency of the story and supported the production’s steampunk aesthetic.

Next month, Collide will embark on creating multiple settings for its aerial version of “Dracula” that will feature a vertical set design to complement the story.

“I really think that it helps to enhance the story itself and the accessibility of the story,” artistic director Regina Peluso said.

Set design can be in the forefront of a performance just as the choreography. For instance, take painter and graphic designer Robert Rauschenberg’s collaboration with Merce Cunningham’s “Travelogue” in 1964 and with Trisha Brown’s “Set and Reset” in 1983.

Both works, coming to the Northrop in November in a performance by Trisha Brown Dance Company co-presented by the Walker Art Center, revive Rauschenberg innovative visuals.

The lineage of set design as visual art continues with local artists working at the intersection of performance and installation.

Jess Kiel-Wornson’s dance set designs often feel like art installations seen in galleries. In some cases, the production actually takes place in a gallery, like her design for April Sellers’ “Echo ... We Are Imperfect Mortal Beings” this past spring.

In her design for choreographer Jennifer Glaws’ “It’s Physical,” at Red Eye Theater (2023) and Southern Theater (2024), she created dynamic sculptural spaces that were integral to the audience’s experience of the dance.

The same could be said for the immersive worlds Rosy Simas creates in her interdisciplinary dance work, upending hierarchies by treating sound and visuals as important as movement. Simas’ installations at the Weisman Art Museum and All My Relations Gallery for “she who lives on the road to war” in 2022 could be experienced as a dance performance or a visual installation.

In 2026, her work “A:gajë:gwah dësa’nigöëwë:nye:’ (I hope it will stir your mind)” will be presented as both an exhibition and a performance at the Walker, drawing on Haudenosaunee material culture, including hand-twined corn husk “salt bottles,” for both the visual language of the work and inspiration for the movement.

Other striking sets in recent Twin Cities performances include Big Dance Theater’s “The Mood Room” (2024), a sun-tinted California-inspired space by Lauren Machen, and Ragamala Dance Company’s “Children of Dharma” (2024), where Willy Cessa’s hanging strips and projected temple imagery created a sculptural, immersive backdrop.

Set design also intensifies emotional impact, along with lighting and sound. Ananya Dance Theatre’s Sept. 19-20 show “Swapno Jhnāp: Dream Jumping” at the O’Shaughnessy exemplifies this approach.

“I’m trying to evoke a world,” said artistic director Ananya Chatterjea. “In order to get out of the known world and enter an unknown space, there’s got to be a lot of suggestive elements — shape, color, texture. None of these elements tell a direct story, but they offer sensory details to help conjure the world.”

Laichee Yang, who designed “Michhil Amra,” said she sees her work as amplifying the story being told in the performance. “I’m creating the atmosphere and context so that the audience can feel the movement more deeply,” she said.