The completely sold out tour was presented by the Great British Bake Off's Mel Giedroyc and once again provided a highly successful sequel to the BBC's blockbusting Strictly Come Dancing phenomenon, offering fans nationwide the chance to experience all the glamour, glitz and excitement totally live.
Kinesys has featured on most of the recent Strictly Live tours - this was the ninth one - to move a combination of scenic elements and drapes as specified by the tour's technical director, Andy Gibbs. This year there were more movement elements than before with the system again provided by leading UK lighting and visuals rental company, Neg Earth, and Steve Kellaway operating for the second year running.
Steve, also an experienced freelance lighting technician, completed the Kinesys special training course a couple of years ago which he found to be 'Excellent", and since then has taken on a number of automation gigs.
On this show, Kinesys was used to move eight scenic chandeliers up and down, plus a massive 2m diameter mirror ball - without which no self-respecting Strictly production would be complete - all positioned above the central dancefloor.
The eight chandeliers were rigged on a diamond shaped box truss and had a few different positions.
Two set pieces make up the Strictly Express train which sat on the floor at the stage end of the set, providing an entrance for the dancing couples at the top of the show, after which the pieces were whisked up into the ceiling and stored.
The central Austrian drape - 'in' at the start of the show - was lifted with eight Liftket hoists - fitted with Kinesys Elevation 1+ drives - raising a pipe along the bottom of the drape which gathered 23 columns of snap hooks, with 15 load arrestors taking up the slack.
Kinesys was also used for various special effects throughout the 2015 Strictly Come Dancing TV series itself, recorded at Elstree Studios with a special from Blackpool's Tower Ballroom. That system was provided by DLM Events.
(Jim Evans)
