Mylène Farmer is one of the most successful French recording artists of all time. She has sold over 30m records worldwide and had 13 number one hits in the French charts eight of them consecutive, as well as working as a model and actress during a prolific and successful career.
Wicreations, renowned for their innovative work in the entertainment industry, were approached by the tour's production manager Didier Gaume and technical director Pascal "George" Meley, who have worked with them before on a number of projects, and asked if they could provide a number of solutions to help stage this spectacular show.
Timeless's impressive stage architecture - nearly all of which moved - was designed by the late Mark Fisher and needed many custom elements.
The show opened with Farmer appearing from within a 'Particle Generator' after a lengthy video intro which ramped up the excitement and tension to breaking point; the upstage LED video screen was hung on a Wicreations WI Tracking system which enabled it to be separated into six sections, all of which independently moved; a rotating telescopic 'spoon bridge' was integrated into the stage floor; a massive custom lighting truss circle was flown above the downstage area, and inside that was a second smaller circular truss also on motion control hoists ... and finally, the fifth moving effect was 11 lighting pods.
All the flown pieces were controlled by a hot-rodded Kinesys Vector control system operated by the Wicreations operator, running 57 motor channels and a total of 68 different motion cues.
This massive undertaking was project managed for Wicreations by Koen Peeters who comments, "Working on the tour was a great challenge and an opportunity for us to use our imagination and expertise not just to find really creative custom solutions for the ambitious production design ... but ones that were practical to tour".
The Wicreations touring team was Axel Van Bree, Erik Gielen, Thomas Van Keymolen, and Miro Kusik. The tour played 39 shows in five countries over three months and has received great acclaim as a visual and entertainment tour de force.
(Jim Evans)
