International News

[caption id="attachment_278768" align="alignnone" width="800"]Untold Festival held in Romania[/caption]

ROMANIA – Organizing a range of large-scale festivals in a short timeframe, Romanian production company Arena Events relies on Prolyte products to support the elaborate and signature design of its stages and safety of its audience. Forza Zu and After Hills in June, Neversea and Electric Castle in July and finally Untold in August. A full production agenda for Arena Events, to say the least. Prolyte Group works closely together with the mastermind behind these events, Corneliu Ladin. Prolyte fan from his first encounter with Prolyte and Prolyte products, he simply trusts Prolyte to deliver and perform.

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BRISTOL, UK – Evans Audio Visual Staging provided equipment and scenic elements across the whole site of the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, which took place Aug. 10-13. Hundreds of thousands of people visited Ashton Court, on the edge of Bristol, during the four-day Fiesta, and Evans was involved in multiple locations across the large site, normally a country park.

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MARYBOROUGH, Queensland, Australia – The Brolga Theatre in Queensland’s Maryborough in Australia is a typical regional venue – its 900 seat proscenium arch theatre hosts an international ballet troupe one night, Jimmy Barnes the next, and a local dance school the day after. Though the venue is just 17 years old, changes in technology mean replacement lamps are no longer available for their wash lights, leading the staff to assess how to upgrade for the future. The future, as they see it, is Elation’s Platinum Seven RGBWAC-UV LED wash light.

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NORWICH, U.K. – Miss Saigon, Messrs Boublil and Schönberg’s legendary musical, has recently embarked upon a major UK tour, taking the full West End production to every corner of the UK. The show opened at the Curve, Leicester in July before moving to Birmingham Hippodrome, from where it travels to Ireland, Wales, Scotland and back to England, culminating at Norwich Theatre Royal in September 2018. Travelling with the show, with its lighting design by the equally legendary Bruno Poet, are two MDG ATMe haze generators, purchased specifically for the tour by White Light.

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GHENT, Belgium – With many music stages and event spaces throughout the city’s UNESCO protected medieval center, the annual 10 day Gentse Feesten is a go-to event for Northern European music lovers. Shining brightly against the city’s beautiful gothic architecture was the festival’s Sint-Baafsplein square stage. Vince de Schinckel brought the stage (one of the festival’s largest) to glittering life with help from eight STRIKE 1, 20 Maverick MK2 Wash, and 16 Maverick MK2 Spot fixtures from Chauvet Professional, supplied by Belgian rental specialists Euro PA.

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LONDON – Mark Cunniffe, lighting and production designer for Robbie Williams, played a role in the development of SGM’s G-4 Wash-Beam fixtures, according to the Denmark-based lighting manufacturer. The designer was looking for a “small, bright, PC lens wash light that would give me a great beam of light while in a IP65-rated housing.” SGM tinkered with its existing technologies to come up with the kind of novelty fixture Cunniffe was looking for.

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LONDON – The 2017 Knight of Illumination (KOI) Awards has announced this year’s shortlist of lighting and video designers, recognized for their creative work in the Concert Touring & Events sector. The winners will be announced at the 10th anniversary KOI Awards ceremony, to be held at London’s Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith, on Sept. 17r. The Concert Touring & Events shortlist is the third and final shortlist to be announced, following the Theatre and Television categories announced in recent weeks.

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LIGNANO, Italy – Italian singer/songwriter and producer Tiziano Ferro is known as the modern face of Italian pop music and his successful career has seen one chart-busting album and single after another earning him a dedicated fan following. His live shows are also known for their visual flamboyance and style and the recent Italian stadium tour was no exception. Belgian engineering and automation specialist WIcreations was commissioned to find solutions for two primary motion-control ‘brain-teasers’.

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LONDON – UK based creative design practice Okulus – James Scott and Louis Oliver – was asked to create a production design the first major production world tour for rising Canadian singer / song-writing star Shawn Mendes. This followed their work for the launch of his second studio album, “Illuminate” at Madison Square Garden in September 2016, and Okulus’ penchant for bringing fresh and interesting visual perspectives to a show.

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[caption id="attachment_278683" align="alignnone" width="800"]Drum spirit gets help from Chauvet[/caption]

KORTRIJK, BELGIUM – The Belgium-based percussive entertainment group Drumspirit has consistently pushed the boundaries of performance for 35 years with its unique blend of dance, theatre, comedy and music. Continuing with this tradition, the group has added a new more theatrical feeling to its current series of Hexahedron shows featuring Milk Inc. drummer Michael Schack and Netsky. Key to creating this new mood is an evocative Bart Rogge lightshow that features 12 Maverick MK2 Spot and 48 Rogue R2 Wash moving lights from CHAUVET Professional.

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[caption id="attachment_278680" align="alignnone" width="800"]Robbie Williams Tour gets aid from Ayrton IntelliPix-XT[/caption]

EUROPE – Robbie Williams’ latest European tour takes in all points east and west of the continent throughout the summer, culminating in two shows in the Russian cities of St Petersburg and Moscow in early September.  Touring in support of Williams’ 11th studio album, The Heavy Entertainment Show, the production reflects the nature of both the artist and the album, mixing full-on schmaltz with in-your-face entertainment in an atmosphere that is cheeky, loud and proud to be brash. In a design set to dazzle in keeping with the effervescent star, lighting designer, Mark Cunniffe, opted to use 200 Ayrton IntelliPix-XT™ LED matrix fixtures to line the front edges of the star shaped stage.

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[caption id="attachment_278671" align="alignnone" width="800"]The original three Flying Pigs[/caption]

LONDON, UK – To celebrate the 25 th anniversary of the Wholehog lighting control desk, the Flying Pig Systems team, along with an original Wholehog console, will reunite at the PLASA Show in September.In 1992, three young, twenty-something men – Nick Archdale, Tom Thorne and Nils Thorjussen – exhibited a new control system for live entertainment lighting at the PLASA Show in London. Called Wholehog, it had been conceived, developed, road-tested and launched in less than a year. Its disruptive power and features drew huge interest from the market, while its impact was recognised by the PLASA Show’s Awards judges who unanimously named it Lighting Product of the Year.

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