Cover It Up's Elliot Stennett, production manager Andy Gibbs and the choreography team worked closely to find a solution for the big moment. The staging of this was conceived by Kim Gavin, and saw ice dance superstars Jane Torville and Christopher Dean emerge right in the middle of the ice and launch into their famous Bolero routine.
The kabuki measured 10m in diameter and was suspended directly below a truss of the same dimensions. The fabric was produced in sections, allowing it to be swiftly and easily cleared from the ice by skating stage hands.
It was stored in a bag that lived suspended in the truss for transportation, and had a double release mechanism operated by 64 electric solenoids (the 32m circumference had two solenoids every metre). The first part (involving 32 solenoids) of a two part operation dropped the drapes in from the truss to conceal Torville and Dean within it. This was followed by some neat visual trickery with shadows and projections onto the cloth before a second drop released it to the floor on cue for the magic moment.
The white trevira drape comprised six sections of cloth, each with a 7.5m drop. The biggest challenge, explained Cover It Up's Elliot Stennett was in calculating the sight lines and the height at which the kabuki needed to be flown so no-one's view was restricted around the arena. For this reason the original drop height of 6m was raised to 7.5m. He also commented that this many solenoids was a lot to be triggered in one line, and that they were very happy with the 100 per cent reliability of the system.
Cover It Up also supplied an 85m wide fully controllable LED starcloth that wrapped right around the back of the set and its two flanking IMAG screens.
(Jim Evans)
