Spain – Teatros del Canal is a major contemporary performing-arts centre in the buzzing Spanish capital city of Madrid and has recently made a major purchase of Robe moving lights, with 24 x FORTES, 24 x T2 Profiles and 24 x Arianne 6 LED wash beams joining the house lighting inventory, all fully flight cased.
These are the first current-generation Robe products in the house, explained technical manager Antonio Serrano, and they are part of a major technical upgrade ongoing at the venue, which opened in 2009 and is run by the regional government.
Antonio has been in the post there for four years and manages all technical production aspects across the complex of venues and co-ordinates around 50 full-time staff working across all technical disciplines and areas.
The three main venues can accommodate 850, 400 and 200 people respectively with the foyer also capable of being a performance space hosting 120, so it’s a lively environment, primarily a receiving house, producing a wide variety of entertainment, drama, dance, circus, opera and music and experimental works.
The Robe equipment was delivered via sales / integration company Telesonic by Robe’s Spanish distributor Midwich Iberia, and the investment was prompted by the need to transition from conventional light sources to more sustainable LED products that also offered more flexibility to stage contemporary 21st-century productions.
Antonio and the team looked long and hard at all the possibilities and conducted multiple demos with different brands before choosing Robe, which was picked for being the best quality option to cover the scope of all their productions.
Also, in large part because the majority of the incoming companies … were asking for Robe.
Antonio – who has been aware of Robe for a while through his 25 years as a lighting and production professional – has always liked the brand for its reliability. Before this purchase, Teatros del Canal also had some legacy Robes in the house – ColorSpot and ColorWash 1200s – which lasted extremely well.
“I think Robe’s TE (TRANSFERABLE ENGINE) technology is a genius idea that really extends the value of the products,” he commented, and being a publicly funded venue, longevity is an important consideration.
The FORTES and T2s were chosen for their power. “Incoming companies were specifically requesting these two fixture types whenever they specified Robe,” says Antonio, adding that despite the brightness, LDs also love the softness, quality, and high CRI of the source, which produces excellent flesh tones and very flattering facial illumination.
They chose the Arianne 6 because it was a brand-new product just launched at ISE this year, which will be a great workhorse LED wash.
The fixture produces wash and beam effects via 19 x 55W RGB lime LED multichips, complete with striking colours and fantastic brightness – 90,000 lux at 5 metres from a very compact housing.
The variable CTO goes from 1,800K to 10,000K and there is also the outstandingly authentic tungsten lamp emulation mimicking 750W, 1,000W, 1,200W, 2,000W and 2,500W lamps – all features making it perfect for theatre.
The FORTES and T2s will be used across the largest venue, Sala Roja, and the second largest, Sala Verde, will have the Arianne 6s added to the house lighting rig.
All the crews and the lighting designers are happy, reports Antonio, as he underlines the importance of the solid local technical support they receive from both Telesonic and Midwich Iberia as another vital reason for picking Robe.
The first production to use the new kit was in September, when award-winning lighting designers Juan Gómez Cornejo and Ion Anibal lit a production of the Spanish Golden Age farce, Los Locos de Valencia (Madness in Valencia).
Photos © Louise Stickland
