Lighting designer Shaniel Laloo of Sounds Ideal in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, used 18 Rogue moving fixtures to add depth and texture to the dance stage with lush colour washes and multiple gobo patterns. The dancers who performed under his artful lightshow were not brave volunteers drawn from the ranks of the students' parents, but well-known professional performers, including Miss India South Africa 2014, Shivani Govendor, a dynamic dancer who mesmerized audiences with her work on Isidingo, one of South Africa's most popular and longest running TV programs.
Also performing at the event were Oriental Fire and Demi Motion dance groups, as well as Ghungroo Dance Academy and Tribhangi Dance Academy, which has toured extensively in Germany, India, Sri Lanka, the UK, Malaysia and Canada.
"The evening's performance covered a wide array of dance genres, so we wanted a rig that would give us a lot of different looks," said Laloo. "We also wanted something that would create a very engaging visual background for the different dances so the audience would get more caught up in the visual spectacle on stage."
To further this goal, Laloo flew his rig on an X-shaped truss configuration. "My design incorporated a combination of two 10m overhead box trusses joined to resemble an X," he said. "This arrangement allowed me to cover the entire stage that the dancers moved through. It also made it easy to overlay lighting effects so I could give the stage a greater sense of depth."
Laloo's rig featured six Rogue R2 Washes, six Rogue R2 Spots and six Rogue R1 Beams. All but two of the R2 washes were flown on the truss structure. That pair of R2 fixtures was positioned on the stage apron and used for aerial washing and audience lighting. By crossing the light from his other moving fixtures on stage, the LD was able to build a multi-dimensional look for dancers to move through.
With its two gobo wheels, and morphing between each wheel, the Rogue R2 Spot allowed Laloo to weave intricate patterns for the dancers to move through, which in essence made lighting part of the choreography. The Rogue R2 Wash, with its impressive 12°-49° zoom range, gave the LD the flexibility to change stage coverage to support different dances.
(Jim Evans)
