Dancing bread sticks

And thus endeth another long weekend.

For the last few days I’ve been gently shivering in a marquee somewhere on the edges of Watford. No, this wasn’t for kicks – we were providing the entertainment for Google Zeitgeist (check this link for more info)

They were having a conference for several hundred movers and shakers at The Grove. While we had nothing to do with that, the evening dinner in the middle of it had us presenting a ‘world of dance’ with a multi-roomed marquee and a number of different pieces between the courses – flamenco, tap, kathak, rap, contemporary and break dance, with a cuban band and DJ to finish the evening.

My name was attached to the sound for this and I’d like to thank System Sound for supplying the kit (a Yamaha M7CL running to XTA control and driving a Martin array in the main room, and a d&b stack in the dance marquee with Shure wireless, and d&b monitors with a selection of cabled mics for the band), for rigging the kit before I got there (!), for letting me invade their warehouse for an afternoon to actually have some idea how to use the desk before getting onsite and for supplying Chris and Dan who both ably supported this iterate theatre tech in running the system, as well as all the others who helped in the prep, set-up, running and strike for this event.

The catering wasn’t great but that was fine as I normally had to be doing something during the scheduled meal breaks and the Snickers bars never ran out (unlike the chocolate covered cereal bars). And the overall design looked good, what I saw of it – though I managed to take a camera out and not take a single shot.

 The thing that I’ve really got out of this is that caterers can’t dance – even if you give a choreographer an hour or two to try to get 40/50 bread servers to step in time.

Ladder Race

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDrBHY0byZY

 I have no comments to add to this – what would do it justice?

of riders and bugs

I have to say that sometimes sound riders just don’t tell the whole story.

Feeling a little better one morning as the call was a whole hour later than on the rota (which after BC’07 was very much appreciated), I was still a little apprehensive about the company bringing their own equipment.

[Shop Talk]

The list wasn’t long; another Yamaha DM2K out front with a whole 2 CD players keeping it company and 6 d&b 1220 as the PA. It was the replacing of our in-house EAW for their d&b that I wasn’t looking forward to then the number of sound boxes coming off the wagon was for more than 6 cabinets.

Uh-oh.

However, all was well when two of the 1220 were ground stacked on a B1 each side and the other four were flown on a forestage bar – the extra boxes were four M2 cabs for monitors and amps split to be on each side of stage. In fact, the biggest problem is having to climb all the way to the fourth floor amp room to turn on a mere two E-PACs for a single pair of our E3s to add some highs in the stalls – the rest of our system is entirely turned off.

I’m not certain I entirely agree with this – I think that adding some of the delay lines in the circles would help those in the lower costs seats but even so the 1220s still have a lovely sound.

[/Shop Talk]

Some of the set pieces are worth a second look – dance floor lengths are suspending to a truss flown in a few metres over stage to allow dancers to pass through during one piece. Another piece has three large treads in the pit – it’s the first time the pit has to move with the audience in for quite a while. There are also two kabuki cloths onstage behind two towers that are meant to be the bottom half of two ‘giant figures’.

I haven’t yet seen what the gold lame is for but I’m sure it has a special purpose.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m still trying to clear the BC’07 after show bug (most people get a party…)

breakin’ technicians sweeping together

It’s like I’ve aged a number of years over the last week.

Some of you will be aware that we had our annual hip-hop dance theatre festival this weekend gone.

After-which, my body is just shutting down – aching back (from shoulders to buttocks), bunged nostrils, raw throat, tired eyes; I am still maintaining my rosy complexion and sunny disposition though.

Despite the dawn til dusk (and some) working hours, it has all gone fairly well, though there were a couple of scheduling issues that hopefully shouldn’t happen next year.

I’m not going into the kit too much with this post as it was all in-house stock but I will mention that our MX-50 vision mixer was finally used in anger with multiple sources (PAL, NTSC and Mac sources) which causes a bit of a communal head scratch to change the settings to make them projectable.

It was also nice to not have to worry about the volume for this – keep it within NAWR guidelines but only the limiters are worrying about sound levels – and the audience was still louder than the music at times.

Also, Rane’s new Serrato digital DJ mixer is fairly impressive – more so when we solved the power issues that the Macbook running it was having.

But enough of the gear, where’s the pictures of stage crew embarassing themselves attempting to break? As I was at the sound desk pretty much throughout (thank God for comfy chairs!) I wasn’t able to catch the reminder of the crew popping in the wings.

But …

as a consolation prize you can see a couple of them doing a synchronised broom sweep.

Just direct your browser to Breakin’ Convention and have a gander at the Bill Shannon video.

As an aside the quality of the video was much improved from the Sampled webcast earlier in the year and most of the videos there are worth looking over.

A couple of worthy acts that aren’t on the web stream archive but can be found via the artist list were Cie Etha-Dam – two guys, two one -way mirrors and a light ball that performed a great duet that used the mirrors to great effect.

And what was the best received act the whole weekend – with the only standing ovation that I saw – was Salah.

Normally when performers go over their slot by double we tend to get a little shirty with them – Salah’s routine was too good.

His myspace site (myspace.com/spidersalah) has a better video than the Breaking convention site and it is worth the trip

Why theatre?

What is the attraction of theatre? 

There’s something about perching on a ladder in a narrow space a couple of stories up manhandling a 24 way multicore cable (that’s 72 individual copper wires with insulation) that needed to be run in 5 minutes ago to make you wonder just what in tarnation the attraction of theatre is …

 Or that point when one of the singers lights up his fag in the wings for the third or fourth time despite having been told everytime that it’s a non-smoking building then pretends that he doesn’t understand …

 Or having the truck pull up to take the props and wardrobe from the previous show and finding out that it doesn’t have a ramp …

Or looking at the large sound desk that isn’t doing much good in the foyer and is going to have to be lifted over the seats to the mix position …

Or knowing that there is a problem with one of guitarists mics but not being able to confirm if it’s the vocal mic or the DI box from his guitar while crouched onstage during the performance …

Or the point when the whole audience is standing and clapping along to the band, cheering the dancers you’ve just released into the auditorium …

 Ahh, there it is.