Robe gets symphonic for Hardwell
- Details
Symphony: The Global Revolution of Dance was one of those moments for lighting and visuals designer Andre Beekmans of The Art of Light and operator Jaap Kamps.
The event was a live performance and collaboration between the globally popular and world leading electro DJ and multiple Grammy winning Metropole Orkest at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam, celebrating 30 years of dance music. It was staged to coincide with the renowned Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) conference.
Andre and his Eindhoven based creative visual practice The Art of Light - who have designed and co-ordinated Hardwell’s lighting for some years - were approached by organisers Fourmation Events and MOJO and asked to create a memorable and appropriate ligating environment, for which he specified over 200 Robe moving lights - Pointes, Spiiders, BMFL WashBeams and BMFL Blades.
The show presented many challenges to Andre and his team which included Art of Light colleague Jaap Kamps, who is Hardwell’s regular lighting director on the road.
A key starting point were the main set elements, designed by Freek Cornelissen of 250K, including a large pyramid shape upstage comprising four equilateral triangles each filled with LED screen. Flown just in front of this was a skeletal trapezoidal lighting sculpture made up from multiple triangles outlined with pixel-mapped LED battens which were under the control of the lighting department, fed content via a Hippotizer media server.
The 63 Robe Spiiders were all rigged on the over-stage triangular trusses where they were ideal for top and back light on the orchestra.
The triangles making up the flown pyramid were outlined with Robe Pointes, with the balance of the 115 Pointes - in total - dotted around the other trusses.
In addition to these Robe’s, Andre positioned eight BMFL WashBeams each side of the stage on the Ziggo Dome balcony ring to augment the options on orchestra cross lighting. These are positions regularly utilised for getting a good layer of light onto the stage. The high lumen punch of the BMFL WashBeam made it ideal.
Topping off the Robe line-up for this show were 16 x BMFL Blades, used to key light Hardwell, the conductor and the orchestra itself.
Lighting equipment - which also included other profile moving lights, lots of LED strobes and the LED battens on the triangular sculpture - was all supplied by rental company Phlippo, with Virtue Projects taking care of the lighting technical production and support for all the 2018 ADE associated events taking place in the Ziggo Dome.
(Jim Evans)
