Crystal has three restaurants, several bars, a nightclub and dancefloor, and offers nightly onstage entertainment including a variety of singers and bands. The club also has its own permanent cabaret/musical show once or twice a week, and the dancefloor is in use five days a week. The new installation was designed by Sasha 'Eagle' Vasilyev - the club's chief LD - and Slava Savin, LD and desk programmer/operator, and undertaken by Moscow-based Light Sound Contractor (LSC), one of Russia's leading installers.
Robe fixtures were chosen for the primary moving light elements of the upgrade due to quality, reliability and value for money, according to LSC's Dmitry Nikitin, who oversaw the installation. The Crystal Casino's Club stage area now has 12 Robe Wash 250XTs, 12 Robe MS Zoom 250 XTs, 10 Scan 575s and 15 ColorMix 250s, rigged over-stage, used for numerous effects including creating patterns and gobo projections. These were chosen for their compact size as well as their functionality.
Six 575 Wash and six 575 Spot fixtures are used for front of stage lighting and also for projecting onto a nearby water wall and curtains. 12 additional Robe 575 Scans are used for both stage and dancefloor - rigged in a central position so they can hit both areas, as are 12 new Robe Wash 575 XTs for the disco/dancefloor. There's also a Robe 1200 Dominator centrepiece. Four of Robe's flagship ColorSpot 1200 ATs are utilized to make patterns and projections onto the stage, walls and floor, and are also used for followspotting performers onstage. All lighting control is via a Wholehog 3 console.
Vasilyev considered all moving light options, says Nikitin, before making a final decision. "His brief was not to completely re-design the club, but to enhance the existing ambience and atmosphere with the most up-to-date light show possible."
With the club being open 24 hours, five days a week, the lighting - especially over the dancefloor - had to be low maintenance and tough enough to cope with the continuous use. Vasilyev had several recommendations from other users saying that Robe's robust engineering would be ideal, and he conducted thorough on-site tests with different fixtures before committing to the purchase.
Apart from that, he thinks the light output excellent and the image projection generally very crisp and clear, even in the cheaper fixtures, where no compromises are made with the optics. "There's no doubt Robe was the best overall option - brightness, speed, noise, features, design and price," concludes Nikitin.
