LONDON – Working on behalf of Upperstreet Events, HSL supplied lighting design, equipment and crew for four live stages at the 2011 Move It exhibition at London's Olympia conference center. The stages – Main, Freestyle, Arena and Flawless – were dotted all around Olympia. HSL project manager Dave Singleton creating the production lighting design. Singleton has designed this show before, but this was his first time working for HSL, the lighting equipment suppliers for the last two years. Key challenges included ambient daylight from the venue's arched glass roof and a tight time frame for load-in and rigging.
For the load-in HSL provided 16 lighting techs, crew chief Simon "Piggy" Lynch and rigger Ian Stevens, plus four students from technical courses at the Brit School of Performing Arts. For the load-out, they were joined by 14 local crew members and rigger Steve Belfield.
Main Stage
The main stage was a 13.5-diameter circular construction, with a catwalk emanating from backstage area.
HSL installed a 20-meter-square mother grid in the roof. Below it were three circular trusses, decreasing in diameter and all at staggered heights, in a "reverse wedding cake effect" – the basis of the lighting rig.
The lighting fixtures were placed across all the circles, and included 22 Vari*Lite VL3500 washes, 12 VL3500 Spots and 12 Robe ColorBeam 700E ATs. In addition, 184 Chroma-Q ColorBlock DB4s lined the edge of each circle.
Twenty-four ETC Source Four profiles were used for keylighting, and four drop bars spanned between each of the circles, each rigged with three PixelLine LED battens and three 2-lite moles.
On the floor, 6 lighting positions were used to cover the dancers in the round. Each position featured two Robe ColorWash 750AT Tungstens and a Robe ColorBeam 700E AT.
For rear light upstage of the catwalk, the crew positioned three Robe ROBIN 600 Washes on a truss that was ground-supported on Genie towers.
Lighting was programmed and operated by Simon Horn using a Chamsys MagicQ MQ100 Pro console with two fader wings.
Each day saw different showcase performance every 30 minutes, amounting to about 200 different artists across the 3 days. The rig had to be very flexible to be able to cover the range of styles and genres of dance and to keep each show looking different and a bit unique. Two days pre-programming in HSL's WYSIWYG suite in Blackburn proved invaluable due to the restricted get in and technical time available on site.
Arena Stage
The Arena Stage was used for the auditions and heats for Channel 4's next series of Street Dance XXL Championships on the Saturday and Sunday of Move It, which were filmed during the exhibition for the forthcoming TV show.
The Arena stage was a 12-by-six-meter stage over which HSL rigged a 15-by-10-meter deep ground support structure on eight meter legs, complete with two 10 meter drape wings to the stage right and left sides.
The lighting fixtures were all Robe ROBIN 600 Spots & Washes, chosen for their size and brightness.
Twelve ROBIN 600 Washes and eight ROBIN 600 Spots were joined by 12 of the amazing new ROBIN LEDWash 600s. The LEDWash 600s were chosen for their white light quality, adjustable in color temperatures from 2700 – 8000°K. On the floor were six ROBIN 600 Spots.
All the lighting on the Arena stage was chosen with TV viewers in mind. Mark Jones, the operator, used an Avolites D4 console for control.
Freestyle Stage
The idea for this 6-by-6 meter stage, sponsored by Moaom sweets, was to allow aspiring dance performers to show up with their mobile music device/soundtrack and sign up to perform as part of a competition.
Iain Keightley ran the lighting using another MagicQ MQ100. The rig included eight Robe ROBIN 600 Spots and eight ROBIN 600 Washes, with a pair of Robe DigitalSpot 7000DTs used for sponsor branding and logos and patterning and texturing over the dance floor.
"Chase the Dream" Stage
The "Chase the Dream" stage saw Britain's Got Talent and StreetDance 3D stars Flawless and their management team become the judges of potential new dance talent, who signed up to perform their 1-minute routines.
HSL built a scaffolding frame structure behind the stage that held eight PixelLines and six GLP Impression 120 RZ Zooms. Across the floor, they positioned five Robe REDWash 3-192s used for creating fabulous low level color streaks and patterns on the deck.
Mark Jones programmed the Avolites Pearl Tiger console, which was operated by one of the stage's organizational team.
Also…
In addition to lighting the four stages, HSL supplied Robe ROBIN 300 Spots for corporate sponsor branding in two of the classrooms, and the lighting for four of the larger classrooms was enhanced with six GDS wireless LED up-lighters.
The first load-in day was Wednesday, during which HSL installed everything except for Arena stage ground support.
On the Thursday afternoon, the exhibition had a trade day, so this window was used to build the ground support and rig the Arena Stage lighting.
HSL supplied the 79 points of rigging to facilitate the four stages, including motors and rigging for the audio systems on all stages.
For another section of the show, Dave Singleton designed a 50-meter semicircular drape to cover the window above the main stage, which was suspended on four additional points.
The load-out took place in a mere five hours, packed into four trucks heading back to Blackburn.
For more information, please visit www.hslgroup.com.
