Australia - The Sydney Dance Company recently celebrated its 50th anniversary with a double bill featuring two starkly different performances illuminated by lighting designer Ben Cisterne with Martin Professional MAC Encore Wash WRM fixtures. Established in 1969, the Sydney Dance Company has a broad community beyond the practice and performance of its lead dancers who believe in the universality of dance, and with the largest public dance class programme in Australia, they help over 70,000 people a year connect with the grace, strength and creativity. To commemorate its 50th anniversary, the company performed a short run of special back-to-back performances from 1-9 November at the Roslyn Packer Theatre in Walsh Bay. The first piece performed, 6 Breaths, was choreographed by the company’s artistic director Rafael Bonachela to an original score for piano and s
Belgium - Painting with Light (PWL) has created a 2km walk-through lighting and visual experience in the centre of Bruges to add atmosphere, luminosity and magic for the festive Wintergloed (Winter Glow) season. Commissioned by Bruges Plus, the organisation responsible for the town’s cultural events, PWL’s winning pitch was led by Peter van den Bosch (business unit manager for leisure & entertainment’) and lighting expert Iiris Rousku who designed the various lighting artworks with their team. It comprises a series of elegant, eye-catching, ephemeral and different lighting and projection-mapped installations, located in six different areas. Each installation was inspired by an aspect of the warmth and hospitality of the people of Bruges and its many visitors over the different generations. Different approaches were taken for each work - s
Norway - The Amerikalinjen building located in the most central and vibrant part of Oslo has a rich and colourful history. It was inaugurated in 1919 as the headquarters of the Norwegian America Line, a successful passenger and freight shipping company that opened up the New World for hundreds of thousands of Norwegians. One century later the architectural landmark has been reborn as one of Oslo’s premier urban boutique hotels, complete with a comprehensive Genelec sound system supplied by Norwegian pro audio specialists, Benum. Occupying some of Oslo’s most prime real estate, Amerikalinjen - owned by the Nordic Choice Hotels group - has retained all of its authenticity whilst providing today’s travellers with a thoroughly modern experience. The remit was clear - Amerikalinjen wanted the best possible sound in all areas of the hotel, to match the rest of the hig
Sweden - ELC Lighting has announced that Stockholm Stadsteater (City Theatre will benefit from a new ELC Lighting network distribution system based around the dmXLAN Node8GBx range of DMX-to-network converters. The system, including 63 dmXLAN node3 units purchased from ELC Lighting distributor mLite AB via local dealer Intersonic, is being installed across multiple performance spaces as part of the Stadsteater’s technical renovation. Situated at the heart of the city in the bustling Kulturhuset cultural hub, the Stadsteater is one of Sweden’s most popular theatres, producing up to 40 productions each year on its various stages. Its new ELC dmXLAN system, which operates over Art-Net, sACN and Shownet as standard protocols and offers remote programming and monitoring via ELC’s dmXLAN software, is set to provide a new level of flexibility throughout the site.
UK - Blitz, a GES company, brings Southampton’s unique history into the future with its three-day projection mapping experience, right in the heart of the town centre. Taking place on the evenings of 21-23 November, this spectacular visual experience was commissioned by GO! Southampton, the Business Improvement District for Southampton City Centre, and is the official launch of a series of illuminations happening all over the city this winter. Displayed on the iconic Grade I listed Bargate medieval gatehouse, the projection show told stories of Southampton’s past, present and future, narrated by the city’s mythical founder Sir Bevois, who regaled his tales to his friend - the Christmas Giant. Using mapping technology, the projections revealed a unique visual experience never seen in the city before bringing the ancient monument to life. But this
USA - Tenth Avenue North, the multiple Dove Award-winning band recently wrapped their fan-favourite Decade The Halls tour this Christmas season, with special guests Plumb and Land of Color. , which explores the last 100 years of popular music with the costumes, set and lighting reflecting the styles of music Bandit Lites provided the lighting system for the show ranging from Christmas pageants to candlelight services. “The big directive for the tour design is it needed to contain looks that reminded audience of every decade of the music they’re hearing,” explains lighting designer Mike Marcario. “Combined with logistical directives to keep the system simple enough to be set, teched, ran and struck by a one-man lighting crew, while also living within a lower than usual weight restriction due to transportation, I believe we landed on a production design that accomplis
Czech Republic - Robe was a sponsor of the 2019 Signal Festival in Prague, the Czech Republic’s best-known multi-platform event celebrating the fusion of digital arts and technology. A series of provocative lighting and video installations turned a series of hand-picked sites, areas and buildings across the Czech Republic’s vibrant capital into temporary gallery spaces for four days, attracting a diverse and inquisitive audience eager to explore new experiences created with multiple lightsources - video mapping, large format laser projections, moving light performances, etc. This year the additional resonance of the date made it 30 years since the ‘Velvet Revolution’ which saw the peaceful transfer of power (in then Czechoslovakia) from a one-party communist system to a modern parliamentary democracy. To mark this, various festival works touched on the th
USA - Tony Award-winning lighting designer Jeff Croiter turned to Elation Professional’s Artiste Van Gogh LED wash moving head to light a new musical adaptation of Cyrano starring Peter Dinklage at the Daryl Roth Theatre in New York. The classic tale of unrequited love premiered in November and has received praise for its design. Separated into five acts, Croiter says he uses the Artiste series fixtures to fulfil a different role in every scene of the play. “Their versatility was key and that’s what made these the perfect light for Cyrano,” the designer stated. “It’s my first time using them and they’ve worked perfectly.” Croiter, who has over 25 years of Broadway and off Broadway lighting experience to his credit, uses the Van Gogh fixtures from an upstage position as the backlight system, forgoing conventionals or fixed position LED backlight
UK - High End Systems’ TurboRay automated luminaire recently made its UK TV debut on celebrity dance show Strictly Come Dancing. The fixture featured as part of a special guest appearance from Irish pop band Westlife during the show’s annual jaunt to Blackpool. “It seemed the ideal opportunity to showcase TurboRay’s possibilities,” says Strictly lighting designer, David Bishop. “Westlife were performing a medley of their hits, which allowed for full use of the fixture’s various tricks. And, being so powerful, TurboRay stood out well in the visually ‘busy’ environment of the Blackpool Tower Ballroom.” Strictly has been visiting the famous ballroom since the show first began in 2004. It’s a massive highlight of the show’s run every year and it’s the aim of many of the celebrities “to make it to Blackpool”, but relocat
Canada - For 15 years, Musicopratik has been one of the premier band rehearsal studios in Montreal, and the only one in the artistically and culturally vibrant borough of Verdun. “We know we’re not the only game in the whole city, so we like to stand out by offering our customers very high-quality equipment to practice on, from backline to speakers,” says co-owner Patrick Mainville. Musicopratik recently swapped out every single main and monitor speaker in their rehearsal rooms for QSC CP12 compact active loudspeakers. “We have five rehearsal rooms, ranging from 15 by 15ft to about 20 by 24. We also have a recording studio with a prep area, and the CP12s went in all of them,” Mainville continues. “Since we started in 2005, we’ve owned many major brands of powered stage monitors except QSC. But when it came time to upgrade, we decided that the QSC CP12s sounded
UK - White Light has supplied a range of new lighting fixtures to Mountview, following the drama school’s move to its new premises in South London. Mountview offers vocational training at foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate level in performance and production arts. Last year, after a 17-month build, it opened the doors to a new building in its new Peckham home. This included the creation of a new 200-seater auditorium, which required a range of lighting fixtures. As an organisation that has worked closely with Mountview for several years now, WL was approached to provide the equipment. Mountview’s senior lighting tutor Alex Cann, comments: “Moving into a new space opened up the opportunity to have the very latest technology match these state-of-the-art facilities. Whilst the new building was still under construction, we’d already started to think about
UK - The bi-annual Classical Spectacular, held for six performances in London’s Royal Albert Hall in November, featured the first Claypaky Xtylos used in the UK. The Xtylos is the first moving head with a laser light source. The Classical Spectacular debuted in October 1988 and has been marked by perennial extravaganzas - lasers, lighting effects, fireworks - accompanying a classical music repertoire. Lighting designer Durham Marenghi joined the Classical Spectacular family 30 years ago in an era before there were moving lights. But Marenghi quickly began to introduce lighting innovations, including many lighting fixtures used in rock ’n roll but new to the concert hall. He designs a new architecture for the lighting rig every two or three years using the best technology on the market to keep pace with a production that lives up to its name in
UK - Arena Birmingham has offered audio description to its visitors for the first time at Marvel Universe LIVE!. Following a request from a customer whose sons are visually impaired, Arena Birmingham partnered with VocalEyes to offer audio description of the action-packed show. The describers, who saw an earlier performance of the show and prepared a script, were able to offer the real-time description via headsets, making the show more accessible to those with all levels of visual impairment. The describer’s audio is broadcast using a digital radio system, ensuring a good quality reception with a range of between 50-100m. Claire Eccles, who wrote in to the Arena to request audio description, says: “It meant so much to my family that we were able to enjoy Marvel Universe LIVE! with audio description. My sons are both severely visually impaired and lo
UK - Pearce Hire was selected by the Royal Variety Charity as the sole contractor for the Royal Variety Performance post-show party. With the show taking place at the London Palladium, the after-party took place at the Intercontinental Hotel Park Lane where Pearce Hire’s project manager Jake Vernum and the Pearce Hire team were loading in a full production package including lighting, sound, AV and cameras. Giles Cooper of Giles Cooper Entertainment is the chairman of the Royal Variety Charity, and executive producer of the Royal Variety Performance and has been in this post for the past 14 years. He states: “My working relationship with Pearce Hire is long-standing as they are our main power and lighting suppliers on a year-on-year basis for many outdoor summer events run by my own company GCE LIVE, and so I know the Pearce Hire team to be amongst the best in the
USA - Robert Morris University is a private institution tucked into the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that instructs close to 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Although a relative latecomer to the scene, RMU’s men’s and women’s Colonials sports teams have made up for lost time, winning 45 league championships since joining the NCAA Division I in 1976. In support of its successful athletic programmes, RMU raised private funds to construct the new UPMC Events Centre, which includes the Peoples Court, a 4,000-seat arena for men’s and women’s basketball and women’s volleyball, an auxiliary gym, and other event and conference spaces. Local AV integration firm Horizon Information Services worked with the architect to design and install a highly-efficient, and thus value-engineered, sound reinforcement system that uses Danley Sound Labs’ patented point-
USA - Like many passengers on the flight from Nashville to New York, Landon Bloss donned headphones soon after take off. He wasn’t listening purely for pleasure though. Instead, he was taking a crash course in the music of Billy Currington. “I was on a load out when I received a call from Gene Jung, Billy’s PM, saying that they needed a LD to fly out the next day to start running his show immediately,” recalls Bloss. “They booked me a flight and off I went. Of course, I knew Billy’s music, but I really wanted to get deep into it, so on went my headphones.” Bloss proved to be a quick study. Taking over the rig originally designed by Ian Saunders, he supported Currington’s 90-minute set on the star’s Stay Up Til Sun tour with an intense, fast-moving lightshow that showered a rainbow of colours on the stage. Helping him in this endeavour was a co
Germany - Fans of Seeed have had to wait a long time for a new record and tour from the 11-piece Berlin-based dancehall and reggae ensemble. In fact, almost a year was spent even before the completion of this disc in the preparation. The design collective HELL, based around Nik Evers, Timo Martens and Philip Hillers, took care of the lighting, stage and content design for the tour, in support of the current album, BAM BAM. "One year of preparation sounds like a long time ago," states Nik Evers, but this is put into perspective very quickly when considering the complexity of the design process, which included an intense rethink at different stages along the way. Timo Martens also explains the idea behind it. “A Seeed concert is very special in its own way,” he says. “The show's central elements in the stage design were two oversized box towers, with the band rise
Hungary - A plethora of Ayrton lighting fixtures provided striking visual impact on the popular televised music contest, SztárbanSztár Leszek (In the Star, I’ll be the Star), on Hungary’s Tv2 television channel last month. Lighting designer, Balázs Varga, chose Ayrton Khamsin-TC, MagicBlade-R and MagicDot-XT to delineate the complex outlines of the stage for this visual extravaganza. Balázs Varga was assisted by Bálint Marafkó, CEO and Chief LD at television and film lighting specialists, Two Men’s Show, which provided the fixtures, which were supplied by Gábor Kele, executive director of Lisys-Project, Ayrton’s exclusive distributor for Hungary. Twenty-four MagicBlade-R fixtures were rigged on upstage trusses to outline the stylised shape of the performance area and provide a ‘top shutter’ for the cameras, with MagicBlade-R’s svelte
Canada - Equipson’s Work Pro LS-Node RDM/DMX streaming device played a key role in ensuring the success of URA: A Celebration of Water, a multimedia experience installed along a one-kilometre stretch of coastline in Québec, Canada. Designed by cadabra, the creative division of AV integration company XYZ Cultural Technology, URA is open throughout the summer and operates in both daylight and evening hours in Chandler, a place where the sea is both symbolically and economically important. URA visitors are transported into a timeless maritime universe where they experience storms, shipwrecks, equinox high tides and even life at the bottom of the ocean with a chance to meet a host of sea creatures including a black whale. Guided by the voice of Lamia, a fantastical being descended from Basque legend, visitors spend an hour walking through eight storytelling stati
Australia - Following the successful integration of the largest TiMax TrackerD4 system to date into the TiMax SoundHub-driven spatial audio reinforcement system of The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo (see LSi December 2019 for more on this), the sound and logistical teams behind the event have also introduced its stage-tracking capabilities during its recent events in Sydney. Staged in the ANZ Olympic Stadium, the four ‘super-sized’ shows performed to a Sydney audience which featured over 1500 international performers. The event was scaled up at every level to accommodate a smaller number of shows in a much larger arena. The ANZ stadium presented a big step up for the team behind the Tattoo and therefor
UK - Green Hippo’s Hippotizer media servers were behind an ambitious and hauntingly atmospheric son et lumière event to celebrate Halloween in the historic city of York. Staged over three nights in two of the city’s picturesque locations - Castle Museum and Library Square - the project was the result of a collaboration between York BID (Business Improvement District) and Polestar Productions. The event employed Karst+ Media Servers from Green Hippo and Epson 1755 projectors, supplied by Stage Sound Services and operated by Steve Jackson of InFocusAV, to deliver the spooky media creations designed by Polestar Productions. The challenges of the project will be familiar to many. “Outdoors, in the UK, at the end of October!” summarised Jackson, adding, “On top of that, the limited setup and programming time was an additional pressure.” Despite the inherent dif
Spain - In a move to a more sustainable future, the Teatro Calderón has chosen to upgrade its lighting systems with ETC products, supplied by the company’s dealer in Spain, Stonex. Based in Valladolid, the Teatro Calderón has long been recognised as one of the best theatres in the country. It was decided that over the next few years the theatre will renew its lighting equipment in order to allow both LED and conventional luminaires to work together as effectively as possible. In order to do this, the Calderón chose ETC’s power control and entertainment consoles. ETC’s Sensor3 power control system and ThruPower modules were installed into the theatre, replacing a Smartrack model which was in place for the previous 20 years. The Teatro Calderón now has five Sensor3 ESR3AFN-48 power control racks, filled with ETR15AFR and ETR25AFR ThruPower modules, in addition
South Africa - As the year draws to a close, AV Unlimited and 24 Carrots Event Design helped a leading financial services provider remind its staff that there is still a lot of fun to be had at its year-end function, held at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg. Event manager at 24 Carrots Event Design, Mase Langa explains that the client’s brief was fairly simple - they wanted their team to have some fun. “The main idea was to deliver an event that was, above all else, about having fun after a tough year. We came up with a design that focused on colour, and the joy and elation that vibrant colour can illicit.” The team at 24 Carrots Event Design provided the client with some renders, which showed a playful set that was designed to inspire a sense of play and whimsy. “We introduced colour and playfulness though the set, decor and lighting, and the res
South Korea - Yeon Moo Dae Church is a church housed within a Korean Army training centre that draws from a mix of traditional and modern Christian influence. The construction of the church took 10 years to complete as it relied upon singular donations from nearly 10,000 individuals, over 600 Christian community churches and just about 600 church-related organisations. Most recently, the church built a new sanctuary with a seating capacity that can welcome its 6,000-strong congregation. The room itself measures a generous 66m wide by 55m deep with a ceiling height of 15m. After visiting other large sanctuaries and listening to their sound systems the church committee decided that Clair Brothers was the solution for their audio requirements. One of the locations the committee visited, the Joyful Church Training Centre, has the Clair Brothers CAT215 loudspeaker system in
