Robe at Sun City, South Africa

The South African lighting designer Denis Hutchinson joined creative forces with Robert Grobler, from rental company Techrig, for the gala dinner event at annual conference of Clover, the South African food and beverage company. The event was staged in the Royal Ballroom venue at the Sun City Resort, in the Pilansberg Mountains, South Africa.

Robe moving lights -- including 24 ROBIN 600 LEDWashes-- were the key fixtures of the design, supplied by Johannesburg-based Techrig, who provided lighting equipment and crew to the event for the first time.

Michael Gill produced a large scenic design for the gala Dinner. Grobler initially gave Hutch -- as he is widely known -- a basic show brief, which included several live performances, to which Hutchinson soon added a myriad of ideas of his own and produced the lighting plot, all based around Robe units.

The main challenges of working in the room were getting sufficient height and lighting positions in the right places above the stage, while also avoiding a series of large and prosaic chandeliers which can't be moved. The lateral solution was to install a series of short trusses hung in an up/downstage orientation ensconced as much as possible into the ceiling coves, which maximized the available height and avoided the chandeliers.

The ROBIN LEDWash 600s were hung on these trusses, together with 16 Robe ColorSpot 700E ATs, with a few other moving lights, plus a selection of profiles, PARs, and some LED fixtures hung on FOH trusses.

It was the first time that Hutch has used the Robe LEDWash 600s. He was "well pleased" with the wide beam angle of the LEDWashes, which enabled him to cover the entire stage and set with ease when needed for the large production numbers. The 15-degree narrow beam angle reminded him of classic beam projectors from his theatrical roots, and he really enjoyed playing with their "fat beams."

Robe LEDWash 600s were specified for the job for a number of reasons including their light weight which helped enormously in dealing with the venue's weight restrictions. Added to that were the 15 - 60 degree zoom, light output, and color mixing features.

Robe CitySkape48s were used to internally light seven black-and-white fronted light-boxes, which broke up the walls and stairs of the streamlined, very "televisual" set.

All lighting was programmed and operated on a grandMA lighting console run by Hutch.