The team, led by head of production Nigel March, and in collaboration with the venue’s riggers Vertigo Rigging, transformed the concert hall into a proscenium arch theatre, with all the expected rigging and flying facilities, ready to stage The Snow Maiden and Swan Lake.
This was the most ambitious set and lighting design ever staged at the South Bank, as well as one of the tightest timeframes. The initial task of the Vertigo team, headed by Paddy Burnside, was to install an 18 x 12 metre mother grid in the roof of the Hall. Below this was hung a trussing sub-grid to hold all the lighting and scenery bars and tab tracks. Because the changeover between shows was so tight, scenery and cloths for both had to be rigged at the outset - leaving just 40mm between each bar!
Vertigo also built a fly gallery off to stage right, and two over-stage followspot positions. The orchestra pit was created by adding an 8ft thrust to the front of stage and removing six rows of seats. This created a space just large enough to accommodate the 36-piece Stanislavsky orchestra. To enable a 40ft x 40ft dance platform to be installed for the performers, at a stage height of 7ft, the hall’s upstage choir stalls were removed. The pros arch was constructed from trussing and clad with flats and drapes. Lighting design (by Ildar Bederdimov for The Snow Maiden and Anatoli Remizov for Swan Lake, operated by James Tapping) uses much of the RFH’s in-house stock, the vast majority of the 750 lanterns being ETC Source Fours, along with Strand Coda cyc lights. The show is run from one of the RFH’s Strand 530 consoles with dimming from Avo.
Ballet is normally free of amplification, but because of the idiosyncratic acoustic conditions created by the existence of the pros arch, an EAW foldback system was installed onstage for the dancers. The whole schedule was compounded by the fact that up to two days before the Ballet’s three-week residency started, the Hall was presenting its own series of one-night events! This meant that as soon as the ballet fit-up had commenced and the mother grid was in, as the night shift finished work each morning, they also had to hang and focus a temporary lighting rig - for that evening’s performance.
"It’s been an enormous challenge," said Nigel March. "It’s brought together a lot of creative and lateral technical thinking, huge determination and dedication from all the technical crew. I’ve also pulled in favours from many sections of the industry to help make it happen under very difficult circumstances! The teamwork has been terrific, and I’m really proud of what we’ve achieved."
