Robe Pointes on Fey’s Desnuda tour
- Details
The tour kicked off in full-on style at the 18,000 capacity Arena Ciudad de México (Mexico City Arena) in the country’s vibrant metropolis.
Fey is a multi-talented Latin Grammy nominated singer, songwriter, designer, dancer, record producer, director and actress who has recorded seven successful studio albums and was massive in the 1990s following the release of her first album Fey in 1995. The proactive celebrity wanted to make maximum impact for her singing and live touring comeback, so her management team asked Gutierrez to create a suitably high impact production design for the show.
As well as being spectacular, the design had to be scalable for an arena tour which follows in 2019 and for potential festival appearances. Gutierrez was recommended independently by three different people for the job of designing Desnuda.
For this Arena Ciudad de México gig, audio, lighting, staging and all aspects of technical production - including video from La Catrina Films and rigging from TYM Riggers - were managed by Live Entertainment a company Gutierrez also runs together with Soho Avila, who was this high-profile show’s production manager.
The Pointes were arranged on a series of six trusses above the stage forming a trapezoidal shape - wider at the top. Each of these trusses moved in and out individually on an automation system.
“Fey wanted to reflect a strong sense of female empowerment in the show and the overall production” explained Gutierrez, which gave him the inspiration for the shape. Its geometry contrasted with the rectangular lines of the five large LED video surfaces onstage, and when in the ‘home’ position, the lowest of the six trusses was trimmed just above the top of the central video screen, so the shape radiated out downstage from there, adding to the overall depth of the rig.
The bank of Pointes also provided essential key and front wash lighting for the acoustic section of the set which was performed on the B stage, located immediately behind the FOH riser at the back of the arena. So they were invaluable in every way, and the beams had no problem projecting right to the back of the arena.
(Jim Evans)
