ANTALYA, Turkey — The Mardan Palace hotel opened recently with visuals designed through a collaboration of Belgium-based LSE and Tara W Smith, creative director of Stargrace Ltd. The event, which featured two multi-media shows taking place over two days, also included appearances by celebrities ranging from Sharon Stone, Richard Gere, Paris Hilton, Monica Belluci, Tom Jones and Seal.
For the Grand Inauguration, Smith wanted to celebrate the historical influences, modern technology and imagination which go into creating a hotel such as the Mardan Palace.
“I wanted to bring to the hotel launch a bit of soul, to breath life into the design processes and influences which bring the actual construction into being,” Smith said.
The show also celebrated the idea of East meets West as represented in the architecture of the hotel itself. “One wing represented Anatolya which we depicted with giant video projection and aerial belly dancers, emphasising the passion of the orient with choreographed flames,” Smith said.
“The second wing represented Europe which we visualized with a daring silk aerial act, high above the audience’s heads, and infused with a fountain ballet; the two were then linked by the middle section with a laser representation of the famous Bosphorus Bridge, representing Turkey.
Each section of the hotel was individually highlighted and “brought to life” during the performance before reaching an explosive crescendo at the finale.
The visuals strived to convey the imaginative process which a designer experiences during the art of creation. A kind of dream space was created using transparent floating balls on the central water feature and with aerial performers lowered from the tops of the buildings to “paint” the design of the hotel across its surface.
The evening’s events centred around the inner pool courtyard and used multi-media effects to illustrate the historical, technological and imaginative references. The building façade, rooftops, lighthouse tower, the pool and the beach beyond acted as projection surfaces, with more than 200 square meters of video projection used.
The show also featured more than 700 pyrotechnic firing points and 30 lasers, with choreographed flames and fountains augmenting the performances of the aerial performers.
In all a total of 30 trailers and 150 crewmembers were required to bring this spectacle to fruition.
“The evening was very well received,” Smith said. “We even had ladies in the audience crying with emotion over the Imagination scene, so we knew we were reaching our audience.”
LSE’s team for the Mardan Palace Spectacular was headed by managing director Patrick Awouters and included technical director Erik Lybeer, LD Theo Cox and project coordinator Marc Agboton.
“I have worked with LSE for nine years and really love doing these projects with them,” said Smith. “Patrick has always put a lot of trust and faith in my work and believes wholeheartedly in the team he has created. We all come together as a united force and the results we achieve are a testament to that teamwork.”
Smith and LSE have also collaborated on the SEA Games in Vietnam, Moscow Sport Games and St Petersburg 300 Years celebration designed by Hiro Yamagata. They expect to collaborate on more projects later this year.
For more information, please visit www.lasyseurope.com.
