Sweden - Dalhalla, an open-air amphitheatre set in the former Draggängarna limestone quarry in central Sweden, is popular for its summer seasons featuring a range of music and artists – rock and pop, musicals and sometimes opera.
The venue invested in 20 new Robe iForte moving lights, delivered for its 2025 season which has just concluded. These are a well-received technical upgrade and have been used over the summer, explained the venue’s head of technical, Anders ‘Hebbe’ Herbertzon.
The new iFortes have replaced 18 x Robe MMX Spots that had been in service since 2012. Still going strong, these are now redeployed in another venue operated by Dalhalla’s management company, Rättvik Event in nearby Falun, which runs for the winter season.
Dalhalla still has 12 of Robe’s first generation of LED theatre luminaires – DLS Profiles – on the front truss of its main house rig of nearly 200 fixtures, which were purchased in 2014 and are also still running well.
“We just know that Robe works and goes on working,” says Hebbe. “So that’s a very good start for any investment; you know that they will be long-term and very stable.
Last year and in 2023, Dalhalla rented in iFortes, mainly to illuminate the environment – the dramatic sheer 60m drop quarry walls and its turquoise base lake – for specific shows. The venue is 400m long, and 175m wide, so serious brightness was needed to cover all of this, and iFortes proved “extremely effective”.
“We needed bright, versatile, robust, IP-rated fixtures and iForte ticked all the boxes,” Hebbe notes.
The new iFortes were delivered to Dalhalla by Robe’s Swedish distributor, Bellalite, who are always on hand to offer support and backup if needed.
So far, the new iFortes have been utilised as part of the upstage house lighting system which is used by most artists playing Dalhalla. If needed to light the quarry, they can be de-rigged and repositioned to illuminate the vast limestone walls.
Technical production for all Dalhalla concerts is co-ordinated by a team of eight led by Hebbe, and since 2022, the technical equipment has been fully owned by the venue.
The 4,800-6,500 capacity venue – depending on standing / seating configuration – is renowned for its acoustics as well as the stunning natural setting. It is located about 7 km north of Lake Siljan and Rättvik in Sweden’s Dalarna region. The quarry ceased limestone mining operations in 1990 and its conversion into an event space started in 1994, a passion project driven by the late opera singer and cultural visionary, Margareta Dellefors, who died last year aged 98.
