The popular tour takes all the glitz, glamour, excitement, celebrities and sizzling hot moves from the BBC's hit series on the road.
It is always a challenge to light. Each of the dancing couples needs a series of different and dramatic looks for their dances, while the whole space also has to have that air of dancehall intimacy. Flexibility is key when it comes to choosing fixtures.
This year there were also more full production numbers in the show. Richard worked closely with production manager Andy Gibbs who originated the set design which included the multiple dancefloors, Austrian drapes, chandeliers and 14 prominently placed mirror balls - which no self-respecting Strictly production would be without!
A major task was getting light into such a large area, and in the past designs - Richard has lit it for the last four years - Robe's ColorSpot 2500E ATs were used as the main 'in-house' profile fixture to do all those looks and the considerable gobo work and texturing treatment on the floor.
This year they replaced 54 x ColorSpot 2500E ATs - all of which had been utilised to create the gobo looks across the 25 x 45 metre dancefloor area ... with 24 of the 40 total BMFL Spots.
The results were stunningly bright, powerful and sharp gobo projections. Also, because of the incredible BMFL zoom - from a tight pinspot right out to a 55 degree flood that's crisp all the way - they didn't have to keep crossing units over to get the floor surface coverage.
Sixteen of the remaining BMFLs were dotted along the audience trusses, eight a side, with two upstage of the judge's desk, as the area immediately in front of this is used was a stage area this year.
The show was programmed by Christopher Hirst. They started from scratch this year with BMFLs now added to the rig, and the show lighting was looked after on the road by Mike Rothwell, who has been lighting director for all but one of the seven annual Strictly Live tours so far.
In addition to the 40 BMFLs, they also used 23 x Robe MMX Spots, 18 x MMX WashBeams, 28 x ColorBeam 700s in chrome all around the edges of the dancefloor, and 56 x ColorWash 2500E ATs rigged all over the trussing grid for the full arena / stage cover and washes, plus copious amounts of mirror ball bling.
The lighting was being run from a pair of grandMA2 full size consoles controlling GrandMA2 network processing units communicating over a fibre network between FOH and dimmers.
(Jim Evans)
