ODC/DANCE
Grasslands
Scenic and Lighting designer Matthew Antaky bathes the stage in grassy tones of chartreuse and gold and his soft, gauzy curtain and cluster of wires and rods that dangle at oblique angles becomes a sculptural field against which all the prances and shivers stand out in focused relief.
OPERA SAN JOSE
Cosi Fan Tutte
The especially effective solo arias, duets and other meltingly beautiful ensemble vocalizing, were Delightfully enhanced by the wonderful and special lighting created by Matthew Antaky in his fourth effort for Opera San Jose.
Barber of Seville
Scenic and lighting designs by Mr. Antaky establish a new high watermark for OSJ, his exterior of Dr. Bartolo’s house surpassed only by his interior, work of high architectural sophistication and décor.
The two sets, designed by Matthew Antaky, were attractive, showing a fine eye for characteristic Spanish-style detail, right down to the wrought iron on the upstairs window.
OKLAHOMA BALLET
Finding/Almost
Enhanced by the unique stage and lighting designs by Matthew Antaky, the world premiere ballet by popular choreographer Amy Seiwert named “Finding/Almost”, exhibited a distinctive visual and choreographic style.
LISS FAIN DANCE
Her longtime collaborator, Matthew Antaky, envelopes her filigreed choreography with masterful lighting and scenic designs. Rarely has Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' Novellum stage looked as good.
Ms. Fain has always worked with ballet trained dancers and good collaborators, above all, the excellent lighting wizard, Matthew Antaky.
Bay area choreographers Liss Fain, Cynthia Adams and Jo Kreiter along with video artist Doug Rosenberg have entrusted Visual Designer and Director Matthew Antaky to create an environment in which Balletic, Comedic, Aerial and Video dance pieces not only look good but also flow and create unity. If anyone can create this, Mr. Antaky surly can.
FESTIVAL OPERA
Our Town
Matthew Antaky's sparsely designed and decorated set and handsome lighting re-created Wilder's early 20th-century America in gorgeous painterly strokes.
Don Giovanni
...Setting Don Giovanni in a modern nightclub provides an opportunity for the impressively chic set and lighting by Matthew Antaky
Candide
Festival opera's production, which features a series of wonderfully fluid, interlocking modular set pieces by Matthew Antaky, is just as bold and outsized as Bernstein's vision.
Un Ballo in Maschera
Set designer Peter Crompton has excelled in his extraordinary conception, abetted by the excellent work of lighting designer Matthew Antaky.
Mark Foehringer Dance Project SF
If Foehringer has hoped to return to his Brazilian roots in the creation of this piece, he succeeds through his use of music and lighting. Indeed the real star of this show is the rich and elegant lighting design by Matthew Antaky, which succeeds in creating lush landscapes, gorgeous silhouettes, and specific highlights of the dancers in a soft and sensual way—Diadorim on his deathbed is a vision not soon to be forgotten.
OPERA PACIFIC
La Boheme
...This is an incredibly visually stunning production
SMUIN BALLET
Matthew Antaky beautifully lit the piece with precise progressive squares of light, accenting the company men successively before the light focused on the central female figure bathed in Red at CS in extended grande a la seconde plie on pointe.
...The excellent stage and lighting designs were by Matthew Antaky.
In "Objects," the four couples are strikingly lit and framed by scenic designer Matthew Antaky's ominously hanging rectangular slab.
FLYAWAY PRODUCTIONS
By capturing all the elegant and seemingly effortless Ariel work, Matthew Antaky creates an atmosphere where floating images dance in a wondrous world all of their own.
YOUNG CAESAR – SF CLASSICAL VOICE
The set design consisted of a series of lavender and white hanging panels reminiscent of Japanese screens and Matthew Antaky's lighting was central to the success of this minimalist approach
Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company
String Calligraphy
Mr. Antaky’s placement of the dance platform slightly behind and high above the heads of the standing musicians was a stroke of genius. It allowed the central place of the music to be preserved, not hidden in some pit, while transposing the dance into moving pictographs on a wall. Meanwhile, The lighting on the ribbons gave them an extraordinarily surreal and charged effect, enhancing the music. Highly effective!
It is a visually beautiful, unpressured mix of global elements that boasts stunning lighting by designer Matthew Antaky.
Southern Girl
Mr. Antaky created a bold and elegant set design and décor.
The lighting subtlety abounds through every breath this luminous piece takes.
All of the company’s superb lighting designs are by Matthew Antaky.
Stephen Pelton Dance Theater
“Not Here” is an Enthralling solo for Nol Simonse, the music is melancholy Radiohead and Matthew Antaky’s Lighting is again Superb.
Mr. Antaky's stage designs boast simplicity and sharpness that bring to mind the early work of Robert Wilson. The easy transformation of a white paper screen marked by the shadows of saxophone players into a snowy hilltop rising to a dark night is one of several moments where Mr. Antaky’s alchemy turns Theater Artaud’s limitations into virtues.
America Songbook
As “America Songbook” Came to an end, two wounded soldiers helped each other up Mr. Antaky’s white-paper hill, a fallen backdrop from an earlier act. It crunched beneath their feet, fragile and manmade, like the war they fought.
Animal Acts
Mr. Antaky’s set of disheveled drapes, dingy ropes and large blue medicine ball conjured the weary dissoluteness of a small tent belonging to a traveling band of performers, while his lighting infused the whole with humane warmth.
San Francisco Chronicle
September for Sale
The dancers are powerful, the sets and lighting by Matthew Antaky support the emotional atmosphere, the multiple costume designs by Susanna Douthit are simple and appropriate and Austin Forbord’s video design both challenges and extends the many thematic connotations. Pelton and his collaborators are to be congratulated for bringing "September for Sale" to realization.
Chitresh Das Dance Company
East as Center
Thanks to Mr. Antaky’s brilliant lighting and set design (Five white diamond shapes on the floor and hanging panels that added depth), ODC theater’s utilitarian space was transformed into a magic kingdom whose inhabitants fought ancient battles about jealousy, faithfulness, courage and dedication.
The Theater was set up with an orchestra down stage right, and black panels hung at intervals deep at the back of the house—which when lit by the wizardly smoke and mirrors effects of Matthew Antaky, very powerfully suggested the dappled forest floor, dawn in the forest, the palace of Ravana, the hermitage of his brother, the country home of Ram, even the upper atmosphere where Ravana in his chariot encounters the eagle in full flight.
Credit for the gorgeous auburn textured set and mystical lighting design goes to Matthew Antaky, in the background is an enormous rectangular picture frame, colored by a reddish earth-toned texture and ancient, shadowy designs.
- Asian week
Sampurnam
This was one of the most visually entrancing (Chitresh Das) programs in recent memory, with a stage design by Matthew Antaky that framed the action with ornate scrolls and made the floor glow orange beneath the dancer’s glittering skirts.
- Voice of Dance
La Tania Flamenco
Passage of the muse
Mr. Antaky’s ability to weave the projections of Judith Deim’s paintings into the fabric of the entire piece is quite astounding. When my attention to the action on stage starts to lag, his visual unity draws me back in, and I cannot escape.
A beautifully projected triptych that hung behind suggested a compassionate figure caught in a blazing landscape while Teresa Vallejo, whose rich voice could melt bitter chocolate was suddenly silent, majestically trailing a long red scarf across the entire back of the stage.
Mr. Antaky’s simple diagonal provides an invisible frame for La Tania’s white shawl over a black dress. But as she dances the light subtly changes to suit the mood, and at one point there is a beautiful sequence of her shadow on the background, her arms and the shawl like the wings of a bird.
The Program starts stark and evolves out of Goya-like depths of darkness. Silhouetted, La Tania casts looming shadows reminiscent of those in Sargent’s great painting “El Jaleo.”
La Tania moved with the fluidity and changeableness of Matthew Antaky’s subtle lighting, which suggested a continuum of shifting times and places across the stage.
Mass:
Mass-Dallas
Designer Matthew Antaky worked wonders with a simple ramp bisecting the stage and shifting light schemes.
Caminos Flamencos
To begin with, Matthew Antaky’s stage design is stunning; Lena Herzog’s tension-filled black and white photos of dancers and matadors flash onto front and rear scrims while the lighting design plays off the photos composition with architectural savvy.
Rapunzel
Thank you very much for your imaginative and pertinent beauties in designing the stage and lighting for Rapunzel. The whole thing worked very well together and I thought this was by far the best of the four productions that I have witnessed.
- Personal letter from composer, Lou Harrison
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