Taiwan’s National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying) brings Ayrton Khamsin-S to Turandot revival
When Taiwan’s National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying) hosted a revival of the German/Taiwanese co-production of Puccini’s Turandot earlier this year, Mr Chien-hao Kuo, lighting designer and head of lighting, boldly chose to replace all the discharge moving lights of the original design with LED fixtures.
He carefully selected 26 Ayrton Khamsin-S profiles which were supplied to the venue from its rental stock by Hispot Workshop of Taipei, Taiwan, a company which has been dedicated to theatre design and equipment rental for over twenty-six years. Mr Kuo’s choice was a considered one as he had used Ayrton Khamsin-S on several operas in the past and knew them to be both powerful and quiet.
Ayrton Khamsin-S played a pivotal role at the heart of Mr Kuo’s design by creating leading image effects and using the gobo flow to match the media content. “I kept the fixtures busy in colour changing, gobo rotating and graphic animation,” he says. “All functions were set to work for hours, and we never had to reset the system when the show was in process.”
Khamsin-S’s reliability was also an important factor as Turandot’s stage set design included a semi-circular cyclorama and central slope feature. “Because of these stage features, once the lights were rigged, it would be difficult to access them for any further readjustment,” explains Mr Kuo. “We therefore decided that all the overheads would be Khamsin-S moving lights because it is a very stable fixture. And once they were rigged above the stage, it was very easy to achieve both clean shutter cuts and smooth washes.”
Because Ayrton Khamsin-S is brighter than the fixtures in the original design, and the LED colours are different from those in the discharge units, Mr. Kuo took time to adjust the intensity and colours to correspond with the original look of the production. “In this production, digital media took up the largest proportion of the design, with the lighting forming a balance between the stage and video concepts. Khamsin’s electronic dimmer is very precise and allowed me to make fine adjustments that created a proper bridge between the two.”
National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying) is a sleek, wave-shaped, 3.3-hectare (8.15 acre) building which, as the world’s largest single-roof performing arts centre, provided a majestic setting for this internationally popular classic opera. The original co-production between the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying) and Deutsche Oper am Rhein premiered in Theater Duisburg, Germany in December 2015, before receiving its Asian premiere at the Weiwuying Opera House in April 2019. The lighting design was a joint creation between Volker Weinhart for Germany and Mr Kuo for Taiwan. This latest revival in August 2020 enjoyed huge success, with a simultaneous live broadcast on Weiwuying’s official YouTube channel that also allowed 50,000 people across the world to enjoy the experience together, without borders.
For more information on Ayrton Khamsin-S and Khamsin-TC, and the full range of LED lighting fixtures, visit www.ayrton.eu
Photos: All photos credited as © Image provided by National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying)
About Ayrton:
AYRTON is specialized in developing intelligent LED light products for Entertainment and Architectural applications.
Based south of Paris, France, the AYRTON Headquarters and Research & Development centre combine and organize the highest competence in engineering, software, electronics and optics, with the aim to create highly innovative fixtures.
AYRTON fixtures are created to answer any demanding installation and criteria, and are distributed through devoted and exclusive worldwide teams. AYRTON uses reliable, flexible and avant-garde technologies linked to innovative design, to provide AYRTON customers with a wide range of pioneer lighting solutions for installation in Stages, TV Studios, Show-venues and Architectural schemes.
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