Lighting Designer Eyal Tavory chose a large Robe-orientated rig for Yehuda Poliker and Shlomi Shabat’s performance in Israel. It included 35 BMFL spots to give the impact that everyone was anticipating at a recent show at the Rishon Lezion Amphitheatre, and he needed to cover a large stage which accommodated the full backing bands for both artists – totalling 22 musicians and singers.
Multiple trusses were flown in the air, supported by two side trusses left and right – one below the other – which were invaluable for providing positions to get ‘filler’ light across the band both upstage and downstage – ensuring that the stage space had a proper 3D appearance when lit. The BMFL Spots were used for front, back and side light and as such were the primary work-lights on the rig.
Tavory’s style for lighting for this special collaboration was all about big punchy, colourful and integrated pictures, also with lots of lights reaching out and into the audience. It was about making large statements and supporting the music, drawing all eyes to the stage. The visual picture was completed with a sizeable upstage LED screen fed with a combination of IMAG camera relay which looked very effective and carefully selected playback video.
12 Robe MMX spots were used for the front key lighting and specials, with some Robe ColorWash 2500E AT’s on the back trusses providing secondary colour washes across the stage and out into the front rows of audience.
Running along the bottom of the LED screen – which started about 3m off the ground – was a low truss, hung with a black drape down to the floor and rigged 16 Robe LEDBeam 100s plus a further eight (LEDBeam 100s) on a circle truss flown in the upstage right corner of the roof. These created sun-like rays and effects and added a pleasant touch of asymmetry.
Tavory and Lighting Programmer and Operator Tsafi “Saffi” Dagan ran the Poliker / Shabat show between them using two lighting consoles. Saffi has also been involved with Poliker’s live shows in this context for the last four years. All lighting was supplied by leading Israeli rental company Argaman Systems which has a large stock of Robe moving lights. This was Tavory’s second design using BMFLs – some of Poliker’s solo shows were the first time he tried Robe’s signature high powered luminaires.
He’s been actively using Robe for a long time, in fact ever since Danor Theatre & Studio Systems became the Israeli distributor in 2004. He thinks the brand has made “huge steps forward” in recent years and has been inspirational in bringing genuinely innovative and different products to the market.
