The show, Odyseo, was devised by artistic director Pascal Jacob to commemorate the 150th anniversary of world leasing Belgian chemicals and plastics manufacturer Solvay. Fifteen performances took place over 10 days in a special tented venue installed at the Solvay Campus HQ in Brussels.
Brussels based Y. Services handled all the artistic, technical and show production and scenography under the direction of Yvon van Lancker, well known for his work with Cirque du Soleil founder Franco Dragone in Las Vegas.
Wicreations was approached by Yvon van Lancker after some previous collaborations, and asked to help realize and build a structure needed to stage this ambitious show. Wicreations' Project Manager was Koen Peeters.
The Odyseo show was housed in a 50m diameter dome shaped tensile structure, custom fabricated by the German company Röder, and each event was attended by over 1000 seated invitees.
Central to staging the production in this space was creating a show rigging superstructure to give a 12m diameter completely empty space below - in which the aerial elements of the show could freely be performed.
A careful mix of imagination and innovation was required. The structure had to enable virtually any possible flying act to take place and also house all necessary lighting, sound and AV equipment - including follow spots and IMAG cameras - and include a catwalk safe working area for up to 16 people.
The showspace required a minimum of 18m headroom and had to be able to accommodate 12 moving performer winches, and at one point all aerialists descending simultaneously.
The WI-structure was based on four standard WI-towers joined by custom interconnections. The steel WI-towers' outside dimensions are 750 x 750mm, and the main outside cords are 60 mm square tubing with intermediate tubing at 48.3 mm making the attachment of scenic or production equipment very straightforward. The legs are individually adjustable to deal robustly with uneven surfaces.
The main feature of the rigging structure was a circular aluminium catwalk at 12 metres high with direct access bridges coming off the four legs and 24 integrated aerial performer launching platforms - 12 outside of the catwalk and 12 inside of it. This allowed aerial performers to be dropped in unimpeded at virtually any point of the main structure.
The 15 Odyseo performances over 10 days were enjoyed by staff, clients and guests of Solvay who were treated to a hugely memorable landmark production and completely unique show, created just for them.
Yvon Van Lancker comments: "Working with Wicreations was excellent as always. They understood extremely quickly what I wanted to achieve, they have the knowledge, flair and ingenuity to produce a precise, inventive and absolutely safe solution."
(Jim Evans)
