Professional Lighting & Production - Winter 2019 | Page 19

The Absolute Dance tour comes at a unique time for the franchise,
which finds its peak international popularity coinciding with a
major pivot in the series’ cast and overall story arc. The show,
produced by Toronto’s Temple Street Productions, is shot in a dra-
matic mockumentary style and follows an elite group of dancers
attending the fictional Next Step Dance Studio as they train and
compete. Its 26-episode sixth season ran from late 2018 through
April 2019, with a seventh season confirmed for 2019-2020 that
will introduce a host of new characters and new plot lines.
Nevertheless, Moore says his mandate was clear: to maintain
the overall production quality and subsequent wow factor they’ve
achieved with the previous tours and then take it to new heights.
“The big thing for this one was figuring out ways to still give
the show a big look with a really great production quality while
keeping the budget in check,” he elaborates, citing a lean touring
crew and minimal setup/teardown time as two key means to that
end. Of course, the fact that the show is largely driven by pre-
recorded music and video segments meant they could rely heavily
on programming and automation for the technological elements.
As such, the total touring crew for the production technolo-
gies side is two techs: Moore, who handled the lighting, video,
and audio system designs and now holds down tour manage-
ment responsibilities, and fellow Soundbox Productions tech
Colin “Junior” Tomlinson, who operates and oversees those
systems for each performance.
The production package they’re carrying comes from Sound-
box’s Hamilton, ON headquarters and travelled first to Australia
and then the U.K., where it was augmented with some additional
equipment from Adlib Sound Light and Visual Solutions to ac-
commodate some slightly larger arena-type venues.
Revisiting the design process, Moore says: “A big focus for me
was to find ways to keep the programming simple and not have
a bunch of different elements onstage that might clash – again,
trying to keep everything lean and tight while still being exciting.”
That largely informed his decision to take a notably differ-
ent approach for Absolute Dance than he has with previous Next
Step tours.
“I’ve always leaned more towards patterns and textures
and really leaning on our moving lights for a really big look,” he
shares. “This time, I thought using colour as the primary theme
would be challenging and really interesting – painting the
stage in really deep, rich colours. It’s all about setting a vibe that
creates cohesion between the music and choreography and the
costumes, and I think this approach really works for that.”
As such, he’s relying on his movers solely as washes and fore-
going any spot fixtures with gobos or elaborate patterns – “and
it’s kind of refreshing,” he adds. “It was refreshing yet challenging
to provide the same energy I normally would without relying on
all those different fixture types – just using a simpler fixture to do
the same thing.”
Subsequently, the lighting rig is essentially comprised of
three types of fixture: 72 Elation Pixel Bar 40s, 27 Elation ZCL 360i
LED moving lights, and a dozen Martin MAC Quantum washes.
At FOH is a relatively compact control setup with an MA Lighting
grandMA3 light console integrated with the now-ubiquitous
QLab multimedia playback and Resolume VJ software.
Beginning with the Pixel Bar 40s, Moore says they’ve become
a go-to workhorse for him and were a big part of the last Next
Step outing. More recently, he had a complement out with Cana-
dian rockers Billy Talent and was quite happy with their capabili-
ties when integrated with Resolume.
“Using Resolume, we can send out video information to the
Pixel Bars, which is a really cool way of getting the energy going
with a simple set-up,” he shares. “We can create really cool effects
and do different things with the LED bars that go beyond what
you can do with just a console. It creates depth and almost like
a 3D feel, which is great for The Next Step’s production design,
because it’s almost like a canopy over the stage, where the lights
kind of wrap the dancers.”
He’s equally fond of the compact ZCL 360i movers. “They’re
bright, they’re fast, they’ve got a great zoom, and a really good
dimming curve,” he says, adding he likely would have opted for
them regardless of budget or space limitations.
That said, this rig was designed with both top-of-mind, and
Moore and his Soundbox colleagues devised a clever way to ship
the package thanks to the Pixel Bar and ZCL 360i’s compact form
factors. When travelling domestically, they pack into pre-rigged
carts, but for flights, everything is creatively reconfigured so
the Pixel Bars travel upward in the carts and the ZCLs pack into
compact 2 x 4-ft. road cases for a relatively minimal footprint and
shipping cost.
As for the compact-but-complex package that Tomlinson
oversees at FOH, this marks the first time a Next Step outing has
been anchored by a grandMA.
“We’ve done the show on a [Jands] Vista in years past to have
something easy to fly, and there’s a lot of familiarity for me on
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