Lighting designer Mark Kenyon specified nearly 90 CHAUVET® Professional fixtures to revamp the set design on BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing, a British television show featuring celebrities with professional dance partners competing in Ballroom and Latin dances. The show has been on air since 2004, recently exploding in popularity and inspiring similar shows in 30 other countries.
Sharing center stage with show contestants are six CHAUVET ® Professional Q-Wash™ 560Z LED moving heads in custom-finished chrome casings. Lightweight flicker-free and with a variable zoom, these LED moving yokes add eye candy to the set, flooding the stage with light while punctuating performances with powerful colored beams. A quick pan-and-tilt speed allows the fixtures to follow the fluid moves of each dancer as they perform to the different beats of the rumba, salsa, foxtrot, and Viennese waltz.
Additionally placed throughout the set are 50 high performance CHAUVET ® Professional COLORdash™ Batten Tri linear wash lights, as well as 32 COLORado™ 1 Tour static pod lights. The COLORdash™ Batten Tri provides flawless solid colors for uplighting surfaces and has a pixel-mode personality that allows control over each of the eight high-powered, tri-colored LEDs, giving the designer the flexibility to create intricate runway effects on the dance floor. Each COLORado™ 1 Tour static wash light has five distinct dimming curves that provide smooth dimming to closely match conventional sources. Both fixtures provide vibrant, saturated washes from the back cyc and a signature colored arc design of the set to downlight the main dance floor.
“The Q-Wash™ 560Z LED worked exceptionally well on stage,” Mark Kenyon said. “They are extremely bright and at times cut through the lights of the rest of the set. The COLORdash™ Batten Tri and COLORado™ 1 Tour washed the stage in a rich, even field of color. All of the fixtures on stage worked together to help create a powerful yet subtle visual impact.”
Kenyon is an award-winning lighting designer whose work ranges from studio shows, such as “Strictly Come Dancing” and “Parkinson,” to entertainment extravaganzas like “Party at the Palace,” in the grounds of Buckingham Palace as part of the celebrations for Her Majesty's Golden Jubilee, for which he received an RTS Lighting Award nomination.
Creative Team
Mark Kenyon, Lighting Designer
Equipment
6 CHAUVET® Q-Wash™ 560Z LED
50 CHAUVET® COLORdash™ Batten Tri
30 CHAUVET® COLORado™ 1 Tour