The sanctuary in the East Williamsburg area of Brooklyn recently reopened
USA - The Brooklyn Mirage is an aptly named open-air live music venue located in the heart of New York City’s most populous borough. The sanctuary in the East Williamsburg area of Brooklyn recently reopened after a 15-month hiatus and now greets crowds of eager live music fans with a an IP-rated lighting package from Elation Professional.
The Brooklyn Mirage lies in the Avant Gardner complex, an 80,000sq.ft site that occupies an entire city block. The vast complex includes an indoor space, The Great Hall, and an intimate club space called The King’s Hall, as well as the outdoor The Brooklyn Mirage.
The large courtyard is surrounded by towering walls and is lined with palms and other foliage. Multi-tiered, it includes a balcony that encircles the courtyard, as well as a fourth level overlook called The Crown. The venue hosts all types of events - corporate or private - but thrives as a bastion for electronic music lovers.
Head of production at Avant Gardner is Stephen Wyker, who verifies what many had expected after an extended absence of live music. “Not only are people back, they are back at 150%. Artists were ready to get back on the road and demand for tickets has been sky high.”
Wyker handles lighting design at The Brooklyn Mirage and says lighting wise the overall need was fairly simple. “We wanted a creative lighting package we could use outside and the only way to do that was to use IP65-rated fixtures. When we were looking for IP fixtures in 2019 there was really no other competition to the Proteus Hybrid. We had used 16 of them in 2019 along with 24 Paladins and had really good luck with them so we decided to go with even more this year.”
The new Elation package, installed in May for their summer three-month season, consists of 16 Proteus Hybrid moving heads, 18 Paladin LED wash/strobe/blinder, 60 Cuepix 16IP DTW matrix LED blinder and effect panels, 28 DTW Blinders, and 12 SixPar 300 IP six-colour PAR lights. Wyker worked closely with Elation rep firm The Healy Group on fixture choice for the venue with all units supplied by Gateway Productions of Newburyport, Massachusetts. The in-house team at Avant Gardner handled installation of the products.
The Brooklyn Mirage stage is 48ft wide with an upstage truss and number of projection towers scattered about for AV gear. Eight Proteus Hybrids work from the towers with the remainder occupying the upstage truss together with Paladin units and the 60 Cuepix 16IP DTW. The rest of the Paladins are spread around the room as blinder/strobes.
“The Proteus are clearly reliable and we’ve not given up anything going with IP65 units,” Wyker comments. “They are punchy with great optics and have a great gobo package. They look great as well. We’ve really been happy with these fixtures.”
The DTW 700 Blinders work from the projection towers to add additional warmth and dancefloor looks around the room. Wyker comments, “Our CEO, who is also our creative director, loves the warmth of analogue light so he was aching to have the Cuepix and the blinders to add some warmth to the space.”

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