From mid-October to early December 2017, Finnish rock band Sunrise Avenue toured across Europe on their Heartbreak Century tour, a run of smaller venues before the 5-member band hits the road on a bigger arena tour in 2018.
Light, set and video were supplied by Ambion GmbH headquartered in Kassel, Germany. Stephan Aue, who supported the band for the first time in 2015 during their arena tour, was responsible for the lighting design, relying on products from Elation Professional, among others. The veteran LD specified a total of 10 compact Elation ACL 360i beam effect lights were used, as well as 5 of Elation’s new Dartz 360 LED beam/spot fixtures. The fall Sunrise Avenue tour marked the touring debut of the compact narrow-beam Dartz luminaire.
“We only had about 450 kilograms of cargo available, which restricts a lot,” Aue said. “Design can be a challenge in small venues. We wanted to generate a small floor light setup, which we did using Ambion floor stands, so-called Tanktraps. We opened up several vertical levels of light that ascended in a staircase of 1.5 to 3 meters in height. A total of 5 Tanktraps were equipped with ten ACL 360i units with a Dartz 360 placed on top. We bought the ACL 360i some time ago, which is the ideal tool for this type of use. We already used it on The Dark Tenor and like to use it as a floor beam for bigger productions.”
Aue is also very satisfied with the new Dartz 360. “We became aware of the Dartz 360 during a visit by LMP to our facility,” he explained. “We immediately fell in love with it and fortunately were able to try it out on this tour. It’s very compact, an excellent lighting fixture, and we are very positively surprised by its performance.” In the smaller venues of Sunrise Avenue’s fall tour, the Dartz 360 was able to fully exploit its advantages as a fully-fledged LED-based beam light. One of those advantages was the elimination of the potential risk that traditional beam lights present in small spaces. Despite the narrow beam spread of only 3° and the powerful beam effects produced from the Dartz 360’s 50W RGB LED engine, the luminaire is safe to use at any distance.