Robert Juliat is happy to announce that 36 of its Dalis 860 cyclorama lights, complete with mini yoke and Quickrig systems, have been supplied to the National Taichung Theater in Taiwan by DLHG Co., Ltd.
The National Taichung Theater (NTT) has three main venues: the 2007-seat Grand Theater, the 794-seat Playhouse and the 200-seat Black Box theater. The main location for the Dalis 860 fixtures will be the Grand Theater which hosts a broad programme of musicals, opera, ballet, modern dance and drama. The Dalis 860 cyclorama fixtures will be installed in truss and groundrow positions to light the venue’s impressive 18m wide x 10m high cyclorama with a smooth, even, highly controllable coverage.
“However, the mini yoke and Quickrig system make it easy for us to transfer the Dalis units to our other venues as required,” says the venue’s head of lighting, Simon Hsieh.
No stranger to Robert Juliat products (the NTT has invested in RJ Cin’k 350LF Fresnels and Digitour 6S dimmers in the past), Mr Hsieh and his team were introduced to Dalis by Jackson Yu of DLHG Co, Ltd. “The NTT team was looking for an LED product with good colour mixing and rendering, and multifunctional control via DMX and Ethernet protocols,” says Mr Yu. “Dalis 860 ticked all those boxes as well as being an award-winning fixture by a well-known and respected brand.”
The NTT took delivery of the Dalis 860 units in 2020 but was unable to put them to immediate use due to closures enforced during the pandemic. Now the venue has reopened, the technicians have had the opportunity to use the Dalis fully and are very impressed. “The colour mixing and colour saturation of the Dalis 860 is really amazing,” says Mr Hsieh. “We also like its brightness, the versatility of the optics, and its adaptability which enables us to floor mount or rig it. The engineering quality is robust and reliable, and we have the flexibility of being able to daisy-chain the Ethernet to DMX control.”
The operators and lighting designers at the NTT also benefit from the ease of using their ETC Eos® console to gain full, precise control of Dalis’ complete colour spectrum, thanks to a dedicated and integrated Dalis library. Designers can synchronise their Dalis cyclights to a precise colour, or match any manufacturer’s gel palette, and rapidly fine tune and modify the colour spectrum at will. “This is a great advantage because it is much quicker and easier for the designer to match his cyc colours,” confirms Mr Hsieh.
One of the first – and most spectacular – productions to use the new Dalis cyclorama lighting was the NTT New Year’s Eve concert in the Grand Theater, lit by award-winning lighting designer, Cheng-Wei Teng (winner of the World Stage Design Professional Lighting Gold Award in 2017).
Publicised as ‘a purely vocal feast’, the audience was treated to a festive, musical evening featuring award-winning acapella vocalists who showcased a wide variety of music pieces and styles from around the world.
Lighting designer Cheng-Wei Teng produced a spectacular lighting design worthy of such a celebration to which he brought his trademark pixel lighting effect. He rigged one row of 12 Dalis 860 units behind the venue’s projection screen from where he rear-projected cyclorama colour and pixel effects from the groundrow position, and used a second row of 12 units to colour the haze circulating in mid-air.
Mr Teng agreed with Mr Hsieh saying: “I was impressive with the power of Dalis 860. The colour mixing is good, but the powerful brightness and the fullness of the saturation is amazing.”
Photo: © National Taichung Theater / Photographer: LIN Chun-yung & Mon Lee