dance show

[Jon T]

Right, We have now decided to go with the mac 250's. We are planning to fly these with 2x colourscans and a madscan. What else could I add to the fly rig? Maybe some pars with scrollers? what are your ideas guys.

 

cheers

jon

[Stu]

Jon,

 

What sort of dance are you doing? Classical, contemporary, etc?

 

In my own mind, the type of dance your doing should define your colour palette that you work from. For classical, I'd use more flesh tone colours, and pale pastel colours, in order to boost the body, and make it look as realistic as possible. Always found L154 to be a damn good bet in this category. (Not exactly much of an expert on classical dance, so this is just advice from my own view)

 

However for contemporary dance, you might want to reflect the mood of the piece in deep, saturated colours - things like L119, L181, L797, L795, L106, L124 all might go down a treat here.

 

I personally love lighting dance with a nice strong backlight (preferably with 2k fresnels - not always possible of course) in a 3 colour wash, with 1k fills from top/side. You might want to think about putting 3 profiles in each wing, to light the sides of the bodies (a very common lighting position in dance) - I'd use L154 + #132 (light frost) in these, shuttering them into a corridor about 7-8ft high, with the bottom profile shuttering just off the floor - and then split this 'corridor' into 3 using the lanterns to shinbusters, chestbusters, and headbusters. Of course if lantern stock is small/limited you could just use 2, and obviously have 2 seperate areas. Or if dimmers is a prob, you could pair up the bottom 2, mid 2, and top 2 on each side.

 

At the end of the day, watch the pieces, and see what feel you get from them, and then build on that. We can give you all the advice in the world, but ultimately it's your gut instinct that you should build on when you first see the piece!

 

Good luck.

Stu

PS. You might want to think about how you use your Mac 250s in this all, they can struggle to show up over a 1k generic wash at the best of times... Oh and had another thought - breakup gobo wash ;) always a goodun (to supplement your 250s as they won't wash the entire stage!

EDIT: Damn you Gareth, you got there first on the breakup gobo wash - don't type so quickly!

[gareth]

What else could I add to the fly rig?

This sounds to me like adding stuff just for the sake of adding stuff.

 

My suggestion would be to concentrate on getting the basics right before adding 'toys' to the rig. It's a dance show, presumably something fairly contemporary, so lots of top light, back light and side light are good to have, ideally in a couple of colours each. Dance always benefits from low sidelight, so if you haven't got any dance booms, perhaps hire some of those. A cover of breakup gobos always works nicely on a dancefloor, too.

 

Are you playing against blacks, or a cyc? If a cyc, and you're only lighting it from the top, why not look at blowing a bit of your hire budget on a groundrow too? You can get a much more even coverage in one colour, or have different colours top and bottom - can look quite striking if done right.

 

Scrollers can be useful, for example on a toplight wash to give you lots of colour choice - but for them to be effective you'd need quite a few of them.

 

Basically, don't just add 'technology' to a rig for the sake of it - you can get lots of Parcans or fresnels for the hire price of a Mac500, and they'll be much more help to you in getting a good, bright, even coverage of your stage.

[Jon T]

thanx for the advice stu. We are doing a modern dance. they are dancing to all the new pop stuff, christina, robbie etc. So we want it to look funky if u know what I mean. I'm deffinatley guna put some of those colours in some of the lanters.

 

cheers

jon

[Stu]

Ah I should have remembered it's those types of 'dance shows' - wasn't that long ago I was doing them myself ;) .

 

As for this suggestion

Are you playing against blacks, or a cyc? If a cyc, and you're only lighting it from the top, why not look at blowing a bit of your hire budget on a groundrow too? You can get a much more even coverage in one colour, or have different colours top and bottom - can look quite striking if done right.

 

I most defintely agree - some nice colour gradients always look very nice on Cycs.

 

So if it's a pop type dance rig, I'd go for the saturated bold primary colours picking from L104/5, L106, L119 and L795 - nice rainbow colours. Probably best to pick from 3 of them in order to get the nicest, brightest, boldest washes possible.

 

Stu

[gareth]

We are doing a modern dance. they are dancing to all the new pop stuff, christina, robbie etc. So we want it to look funky if u know what I mean.

In that case, use the two 250s to 'pretty it up' a bit with some swirly gobos and movement chases, and use any hire budget you've got left to sort out some nice beefy colour washes in deep colours, and maybe enough profiles to give you a gobo wash across the whole of the floor. Look at putting some dance booms in, perhaps three a side with two lanterns on each - if you've got plenty of people available for crewing, you can get someone doing colour changes in these in the interval, and perhaps even between numbers if there's time, so you can get some variety out of them. Don't be temptes to ignore the basics at the expense of the 'luxury items' - you'll regret it!

[P. Funk]

yeah... really saturated colours. and a lot of light in the colours. seperating out the sidelight/frontlight/toplight into different colours can work really well as well. scrollers are good to get as well - 6 par64s with 16 colour scrolls on them will wash the stage with whatever you want quite nicely. but overall, I'd spend money on hiring a lot of parcans over one mac250 or whatever. just make sure you don't trip out the dimmers ;)

[Stu]

scrollers are good to get as well - 6 par64s with 16 colour scrolls on them will wash the stage with whatever you want quite nicely.

If you do hire scrollers (which could set you back +£100 for 6 - money better spent in my opinion on extra Fresnels, Parcans or Profiles or what not) ask the Hire company if they do them with a Rock string - some Hire Companies will have a Theatre string (with all your colour tints (such as L136, L103, L110 etc) and CTCs) and a Rock string (with the much more saturated colours such as L119, L106, L181 etc etc) - as most Theatre based strings only have a couple of worthwhile dance, saturated colours on them!

 

Stu

[mike]

andif you are using the cyc, you could maybe look at putting some of that extra money into hiring a black gauze. Hung DS of the cyc battens, it can add a depth to the stage like nohing else, and your cyc can look great and atmopheric.

mike

[Just Some Bloke]

I'd agree with everything that's been said up to now. The most important thing for any dance show is the side light. These lanterns should be at arm height and shin height (the two boom lanterns mentioned earlier) because dance is all about movement of the body, arms and legs so these need to be lit first.

 

If you have a traditional theatre rig up, no matter how small, you'd be best to get as much as possible down from FOH and move it to the sides or sit in on the stage. The only front light you'll need is for singers, if you're using them, and curtain calls! Loads of generics at the sides, pars on the floor and movers at the back coming forwards should give you a wicked show!

 

All the best,

 

JSB

[benweblight]

My suggestion would be to concentrate on getting the basics right before adding 'toys' to the rig.

this has been my approach recently, before I would have just have all the movers I could in on the budget, leaving only 4 pars for generics

 

also agree is good to see the piece performed to get a 'feel' for it

 

if it is modern dance then I would put a few 'toys' in yes

[Tomo]

andif you are using the cyc, you could maybe look at putting some of that extra money into hiring a black gauze.  Hung DS of the cyc battens, it can add a depth to the stage like nohing else, and your cyc can look great and atmopheric.

I'll second that!

 

A black gauze hung about 12-18 inches away from the cyc adds an incredible amount of depth to the backdrop, without losing any real performance space.

[P. Funk]

you can get very cool effects projecting onto gauze and swapping between front projection and cyc lighting