Robe takes off at first SAGA Festival
- Details
Helping create this electronic music festival experience and new chapter in Romanian live event history was Andre Beekmans and his team from Netherlands-based design practice, The Art of Light, who specified over 200 Robe moving lights for the largest stage - Source.
Eindhoven-based Andre created the production lighting designs and supplied programmers and operators for Source plus the two other big stages, Heat and Spark. With some stages in the open air, SAGA also took advantage of a selection of enormous airplane hangars on the site, which is still a fully functional working aircraft repair and service facility.
The narrative for this first SAGA Take Off Edition was based on a blend of Romanian history and culture with dance music themes and a line-up including Don Diablo, Carl Cox, Tiësto, Topic, Allan Walker, Fisher, Sigala and more international and Romanian artists.
As the de facto main stage, Source featured a set imagined by Robin Wulff from ALDA that included the DJ booth integrated into a multi-faceted pentagonal scenic orb centrepiece with stylised ‘rays’ that released energy into the dance / audience space.
Andre matched this with lines of Robe MegaPointes and Pointes along the rays, "representing sizzling spikes and energy flows pulsing out into the audience", which consumed 78 x Pointes and 88 x MegaPointes, including MegaPointes rigged along all the outlines of the set.
"It was an easy decision," states Andre. "I needed fixtures with plenty of power and lots of features and tricks, so Pointes and MegaPointes were perfect."
Eight Robe BMFL WashBeams were used for key lights – four positioned on the front of the Orb front lighting the DJ booth just inside and four on the two side towers firing across the stage.
Thirty-two Spiider LED wash beams completed the Robe count, providing smooth, even stage and set washes.
Andre helped programmed the Source stage lighting himself, using a grandMA2 console which was operated for the event by Kasper Isegar.
Area 2, Heat – the techno stage – featured 12 Spiiders providing back light through the blow-through video wall.
Area 3, Spark was built in a U-shaped format – so people could access a balcony behind the DJ for an alternative visual perspective - in one of the aircraft hangers, with another 24 Pointes assisting the zap factor.
Lighting kit for areas 2, 3 and 4 was supplied by The Purple Group from the Netherlands, which was the event’s lead technical equipment contractor. They are part of Ampco Flashlight, who supplied lighting for the Source main stage under Purple Group’s supervision.
In total 55 trucks of production left the Netherlands for Romania. Andre worked closely on site with production managers Rik Smeets and Maarten Hoogland from ALDA Events.
