A special Afrikaans is 100 Jaar Groot (Afrikaans celebrates 100 Years) centenary concert was staged at the DHL Stadium in Green Point, Cape Town, South Africa, a magical location with breathtaking views of Table Mountain in the background. Produced by Coleske Artists and featuring over 30 special collaborations by leading Afrikaans artists, it marked 100 years of the Afrikaans language being officially recognised, highlighting its diversity, rich linguistic heritage and multicultural origins in the Cape. The event sold out in a single morning.
An impressive lighting design for the occasion was imagined by Joshua Cutts and Andre Siebrits from Visual Frontier, featuring over 450 Robe moving lights.
All lighting, video, audio and rigging equipment for the event was supplied by one of the leading South African rental and production companies, MGG, project managed for them by Günther Müller.
Earlier in the year, MGG had made a huge investment in Robe iFORTE and SVB1 fixtures to add to their already extensive Robe rental inventory, which was utilised in the show.
The Robe fixture counts comprised 4 x iFORTE LTXs running on RoboSpot remote follow systems, 24 x iFORTES, 22 x Tetra2s, 16 x Spiider LED wash beams running in Mode 4, 26 x ESPRITE Profiles, 38 x LEDWash 600s, 24 x BMFL Blades, 24 x MegaPointes, 47 x LEDBeam 350s, 24 x Pointes, another 8 Spiiders running in Mode 2, 36 x Spikies, 48 x SVB1s, 98 x LEDBeam 150s and 8 x BMFL WashBeams. These were a vital element on a rig of over 1000 lighting fixtures.
Josh, Andre and MGG have been involved in the annual Afrikaans is Groot run of concerts – latterly staged in Pretoria towards the end of the year – for some time, so having knowledge of the format and style involved was a huge asset, but producer and technical director Ian Vos from Coleske Artists’ vision went beyond just scaling everything up to stadium level. He and the whole creative team wanted to deliver an outstanding, memorable and mind-blowing experience for the audience and performers alike.
Josh and Andre are big Robe users and advocates, so they dipped into MGG’s extensive stock and designed lighting that was flown underneath a massive StageCo roof system and 25-metre-wide stage below. This was supplied by Gearhouse South Africa (GHSA) together with other structures. GHSA also supplied elements of the L-Acoustics PA together with MGG.
The stage design and LED screen layout was created by Günther, featuring three large LED surfaces upstage, a central 9 x 16 screen plus two slightly angled supporting 16 x 9 screens on either side, multi-layered LED riser fronts for the house band/orchestra and two portrait-oriented IMAG screens.
As this was the first stadium-sized show produced by Coleske Artists, Günther also merged their expectations with some carefully engineered solutions that would work well in this environment:
“The whole process was highly collaborative. Coleske is a fantastic client with a brilliant team that respects the technical expertise of the various departments and trusts us to bring solutions to the table. All of us were dedicated to the end goal of producing the very best show for all to enjoy!”
“Robe was a natural choice for us,” commented Josh, “for all its brightness, versatility and reliability,” further explaining that the fundamental rule for lighting any stadium show … is ensuring that there are large quantities of lights in there to fill the space.
While that might seem obvious, 1000 lights in a stadium space is not overkill, and it’s an illustration of how Josh and Andre are highly skilled at filling the space appropriately and with the correct products.
The two make a great team. Andre brings his fund of efficient, super quick programming skills and energy to the equation, while Josh brings a layered, methodical, creative, and theatrical perspective to the aesthetic, all attributes that combine beautifully in their finished work.
“Of course, we then need the right products to bring our visions to life,” underlines Andre.
“Apart from the fact that MGG owns so much Robe, it would have been our go-to anyway for functionality,” he continues, “With so much LED and so many performers on stage, and a 3.5-hour show, we needed plenty of firepower and flexibility, and the Robe products gave us all of that and more!”
On the four FOH delay tower positions – a hugely important element of the rig, as audiences needed to clearly see the performers before any visual effects took over – the 24 x Robe iFORTES were deployed, six fixtures per tower. The four iFORTE LTX FSs complete with integral camera running on the RoboSpot system were also rigged here, one per tower.
This configuration provided high-quality, precise remote follow-spot control and front light over some seriously long distances.
It ensured consistent, accurate key lighting across the entire venue, a crucial requirement for a production of this scale, which featured a 22-piece house band, up to 30 guest performers onstage at various times, plus numerous MCs, dancers, and TV personalities who were appearing throughout the show.
Each delay tower also incorporated a selection of eye-candy and effects fixtures, extending the show’s visual energy into the audience and accentuating the strong sense of depth between the main stage and the rear of the venue.
MGG was the first rental company in South Africa to invest in the iFORTES and iFORTE LTX systems, delivered by Robe’s South African distributor DWR.
Thanks to their IP rating, output, and versatility, they were a perfect choice for front lighting this show, delivering the power, reliability, and creative flexibility required to handle such a dynamic multi-artist lineup.
The ESPRITES were spread out along the most upstage of four sets of trusses shaped into chevrons, each made up of a stage right and a stage left stick of truss. Five ESPRITES were positioned upstage centre on their own truss, also holed into the RoboSpot system and used for strong backlight on individual artists.
A row of Spiider LED wash beams alternated with these upstage ESPRITES, and the three ESPRITES were on their own front truss for high-angle key lighting and specials.
ESPRITE has become a standard back lighting profile for Josh and Andre – again with the winning combination of brightness and reliability.
Half of the BMFLs were on the next downstage set of trusses – alternated with LEDWash 600s – with the others on the most downstage chevron, also with LEDWash 600s spaced in between.
The iFORTES and ESPRITES were the show’s workhorse fixtures, with everyone agreeing that in terms of power and colour, they are “the best currently available.”
Another array of LEDWash 600s were positioned on the second most downstage chevron together with some moving spot lights, so there was a comprehensive general stage wash made up of Spiiders and LEDWash 600s traversing all four chevrons.
The 24 x MegaPointes were on a 50-metre continuous ‘header’ truss flown from the downstage section of the roof and extending along the top of both PA wing structures. They were used for blasting out into the audience and pulling them into the onstage action, and alternated with 40 LEDBeam 350s supporting them.
These formed a certain number of high-impact beams that danced up, down and around the audience.
On the floor, the 48 x SVB1s were deployed around the risers on all levels, together with some of the LEDBeam 150s and the Spikies. Josh and Andre both love the SVB1s, which were used extensively as beams or for cool twinkling kinetic effects, strobe-tastic moments, generic eye candy and back-of-camera filler.
A wide and elegant line of LEDBeam 150s graced the front of the stage, used as dynamic footlights and boosting the stage wash from a lower angle when needed.
Josh and Andre appreciated the excellent continuity and colour matching enabled by using all these different ranges and eras of Robe luminaires, from the classics to the newest Robe technologies, all helping to achieve spectacular results.
A small but tight production team worked extremely hard and diligently to produce a fantastic and complex show.
Josh and Andre did extensive pre-vizzing to establish the basic show building blocks and as much detail as possible, which was vital due to the exceptionally short period they knew would be available on site.
“Every song had its own narrative and was effectively a story-within-a-story,” noted Josh, and they needed to go big, small, intermediate and everything in between to communicate all these dynamics and keep the 47,000-capacity audience enthralled from start to finish.
Ahead of the event, they also spent time with the creative directors, including Hayley Bennett-Freidin, to ensure the lighting was stylistically synced with the various choreography segments and costumes.
The biggest challenge – as nearly always – was the tight timescale on site, for which Josh and Andre hailed their “incredible” MGG lighting crew, chiefed by Pierre van Wyk, who worked tirelessly with eight technicians at the stadium, together with a 6-person Springbok (rugby) style “Bomb Squad” who came in during the last 2 days to blitz the final stages and get the rig ready for handover.
The show was a huge success and a landmark event for the celebration of contemporary Afrikaans culture.
Photos: By Kief Kreativ