Robe in spectacular design for La Demence
- Details
Regular La Demence parties are staged throughout the year including three large weekenders that currently include a ‘main night’ in the 11,000 capacity Palais 12 at Brussels Expo centre. This challenges Thomas to produce an epic look and ambience as a suitable backdrop to 12 hours of techno and non-stop raving.
The most recent one coincided with Pride Weekend and Thomas populated his lighting rig with around 200 Robe moving lights.
Assisting Thomas in glamming and glittering up the lumens were 24 x Robe LEDBeam 150s, 48 x LEDBeam 100s, 24 x BMFL WashBeams, 18 x Spiiders, 48 x Pointes and 48 x CitiFlex 48s.
The galvanising factor is to create a constantly changing, fresh and invigorating environment for 12 hours of hi-energy DJ performance punctuated with body-and-eye popping dance numbers involving acrobats, trapeze, silk and aerial artists which is why he spec’d lighting fixtures with the greatest flexibility.
Also instrumental in creating the visual aesthetic is regular La Demence lighting console operator, Fredrik Heerinckx who brings his own flair and personality to the show.
Thomas hit on the idea of using a giant road-construction red warning triangle filled with a 10mm LED surface as the centrepiece, inspired by the event’s theme of ‘Hard Workers’. Stage lifts were incorporated into the floor for various dancer entrance / exit points.
This was flanked by LED columns along the back of the stage. Most of La Demence’svideo content is created by Jeremy from award winning video artists AlexEtJeremy, however it is controlled via Thomas’s team and output via two 4k media servers connected to the grandMA lighting console.
Eight lighting pods were hung at different heights above the stage, each rigged with six Pointes and six LEDBeam 100s, allowing the beam-work from these fixtures to bounce all over the stage and right to the back of the audience.
Forty-eight CityFlex48s, a distinctive legacy fixture from Robe which has four sections that can be configured into different shapes or run as a linear strip, which was the case, here were positioned around the triangle in an outline style.
The 18 x Spiiders were on the over-stage trusses and provided a general stage wash, supported by eight Robe 600S Spots also used as top lights for one of the dance acts which involved artists performing on hoists flying up and down.
To complete the picture, the stage received a warm theatrical glow from the 14 x LEDWash 600s utilised as side-lights.
L&L Stage Services were the rental company for the latest La Demence. L&L has invested steadily in Robe in recent years and now have several hundred of the brand’s fixtures in stock, all supplied via Benelux distributor, Controllux.
L&L also supplied audio for this show in Palais 12, with video hardware coming from Pixelscreen.
(Jim Evans)
