L'ARC~EN~CIEL 2005 JAPAN TOUR
PRG makes visions of the future available today.
- The Challenge:
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Expand expectations of what's possible in staging concert tours.
- The Solution:
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Japanese audiences are used to stunning stage design, including state-of-the-art lighting. But the plans for the fall 2005 Awake tour of L'Arc~en~Ciel, one of the country's leading pop rock - or "J-pop" - groups, took the vision to a whole new level.
Designs for the arena show called for a futuristic urban setting, featuring 14 freestanding towers. Circling each tower at various heights were five aluminum rings, resembling UFOs, with kinetic color effects playing around their rims. Suspended within the rings, mirrored balls splashed colors across the stage. Rings and mirrored globes moved separately in a pattern choreographed for each song - an unusual amount of automation for a Japanese concert.
Production company Backstage Project called on PRG Asia to provide the stage automation for the spectacular effects, including 28 winches for the rings and mirrored balls and other winches for the black screen behind the stage, the side legs and the center curtain. Two PRG Stage Command Systems consoles controlled the complex automation.
In addition, PRG Asia Lighting provided 69 Vari*Lite automated fixtures, including 15 new VL2500™ spots, as well as 150 moving PAR fixtures, 8 Coemar SuperCyc 2.4 fixtures and a Virtuoso® Dx2 console. PRG Asia and PRG Asia Lighting also supplied crew for their equipment.
By any measure, the effects - and the tour - were big hits. The show sold out its multiple dates in three of Japan's most sophisticated concert venues: Nagoya, Osaka and Tokyo.