ADJ lights Latin America’s largest nightclub
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Standing out amongst the city’s myriad of bars and clubs, The City Cancún is a huge venue with a capacity of 7,000. This vast multi-level club boasts an awe-inspiring lightshow which is anchored by a major installation of 130 ADJ Vizi Beam 5RX moving heads.
Located in the heart of Cancun’s ‘hotel zone’, The City opened in 2004 and is now well-established as one of the resort’s most popular nightclubs. For the last eight years it has been managed by Grupo AntroMex, Mexico’s largest nightlife entertainment company which operates around 80 nightclubs, bars and restaurants across the country.
Alejandro Vázquez is the production director for Grupo AntroMex and has the overall responsibility for the audio, video and lighting production across all of the company’s venues. It is his job to keep on top of the latest equipment trends, evaluate new products and ensure that all of the Grupo AntroMex venues – especially its flagship nightclub, The City Cancún – stay on the cutting edge of entertainment technology.
The lightshow at the The City Cancún is built around a vast truss structure that Alejandro describes as a ‘spider’, because it has eight legs that extend out from a central pair of concentric circles with the whole thing able to lower down on electronic hoists like a spider descending on its web. This was in situ when operation of the club was taken over by Grupo AntroMex and, although he describes it as “looking old and rusty”, Alejandro liked the concept and felt it worthy of preserving. They decided to have the structure renovated and added LED video panels and new moving head beam fixtures.
Having evaluated a variety of options, ADJ’s Vizi Beam 5RX was selected by Grupo AntroMex for the club. 90 of the fixtures are installed in the roof, predominantly on the ‘spider’ rig, with an additional 40 units positioned on static truss structures that run along the sides of the venue and around the stage. Powered by the Philips Platinum 5R 189W lamp, which offers output comparable to a standard 575W discharge lamp, the fixture generates an intense beam with a 5-degree angle which is ideal for generating incredible mid-air effects when deployed in such large quantities.
Owing to Mexico’s tropical climate, the club has previously experienced problems with fixtures failing quickly due to the high humidity and so the reliability of the Vizi Beam 5RX was equally important to Alejandro as its impressive output. “It has a very powerful beam and has also worked very well despite the humidity,” he explains. “Here in Cancún, we have severe humidity and that can be a big problem, but the ADJ gear is very good. Its quality control is high and the fixtures are doing well enduring the most adverse operating conditions on the market.
“We've made comparison tests with several other brands and ADJ has proven to be the best option for this type of climate, aside of the great effects and the product quality. To maintain this monstrosity of a lighting rig is a logistical challenge in the area of service, but we receive excellent support from ADJ Mexico and have experienced absolutely no problems with the inventory.”
(Jim Evans)
