Vejle Musikteater re-opens with Robe rig
- Details
Like most venues, it closed as COVID-19 spread worldwide, stopping the industry in its tracks in March. However, far from becoming a ghost-like shell of its former self, staff, management and crew have been busy in the last six month overseeing a complete technical refit and the Musikteater has just cautiously reopened for shows and business to reduced capacities and a new set of COVID-compliant operational rules and regulations.
During this long ‘dark’ period, the venue’s technical manager Rasmus Primdahl explained, they purchased 16 new Robe Esprite LED Profiles which have been added to the existing 16 x Esprites - selected after extensive comparative in-house testing with competitor products - and acquired at the end of 2019 from Robe’s Danish distributor, Light Partner.
The Esprites join 16 Spiiders and 16 Tetra2 moving LED battens which are also new for 2020 plus 10 LEDWash 600s and eight Spikie fixtures which were already at the venue which invested in Robe steadily in recent years.
The moving lights have provided an adaptable solution that works with numerous setups across all their performance spaces.
Additionally, just recently they also just purchased five Robe PixelPATTs which are used to help create atmospheric backgrounds for streaming applications and for adding scenic ‘prop’ dimensions to some of the live shows.
“We are delighted with all of these fixtures,” comment Rasmus P and the Musikteater’s head of lighting, Rasmus Wiberg.
Vejle Musikteater has two halls, the Store Sal (Large Hall) hosts the main stage with a (normal) capacity of 1134 while the Jacob Gade Salon (JGS) is a smaller flexible space for up to 280 guests.
For the moment, in this pandemic phase of operation, the capacity of the large hall is limited to 500, but that did enable them to start staging live music shows again at the end of August.
The 16 new Esprites were bought to replace front lights on one of the two auditorium ‘advanced’ bridges in the main hall.
The bridge nearest the stage which had housed 18 x conventional profiles was removed completely, so the new front lights position on the second bridge is now 19 metres back from the downstage edge of the stage.
The artists and shows coming through the Musikteater are a mix of those with their own productions, those using the house rig and a combination of both, but it’s expected that everyone will use the new Esprite front lights. Around 35% of these shows will be lit by Rasmus W and his house lighting team.
The first artists to use the new lighting rig included Barselona, Pernille Rosendahl, Nicklas Sahl, and Alex Vargas + Nena.
