Lighting designer Sean Burke illuminated the performance on stage with a dynamic lightshow that include 44 Q-Wash 560Z-LED moving washes and 48 COLORado Batten 72 Tour LED linear wash fixtures.
The Puerto Rican concert was part of Cyrus' global Bangerz tour in support of her fourth studio album. Maintaining a consistent look and energy level for a lightshow can be a challenge when gear lists often change from stop to stop based on product availability in a given country, according to LD Richard Vicens of Musique Xpress Lights in San Juan.
"Adapting the design every day to different equipment while trying to make the show look the same in every country is a challenge, but it's also a lot of fun," he said. "Jumping from indoors to outdoors every other day has its own problems. Miley was pretty easy going; our directive was to take our normal show and adapt it to the local equipment available."
Judging from the energy the lightshow created in San Juan, the singer's confidence was well founded. Serving up generous portions of eye candy along with blinders, audience lights, opulent washes and dazzling aerial effects, the lightshow kept pace step for exuberant step with the singer as she joyfully glided her way through songs that vaulted from the raw SMS to Joan Baez and Beatles covers.
Lending added colour to it all, says Vicens, was the Q-Wash 560Z-LED, thanks to its impressive 13,100 lux at 5m output from 91 high intensity and calibrated RGBWA Cree LEDs. The LD praised the uniform wash, excellent colour rendering and a vast colour palette of the Chauvet fixture.
The Q-Wash 560Z-LED played a critical role in supporting the choreographic element of the concert, something especially important in Cyrus's performance. Positioned on the stage floor, the fixtures were used as cross lights during dance routines.
"They were great," Vicens said of the lights during the dance routines. "They produced a range of colours and we took advantage of that many times. Also, their movement was very fast, which was important to our design."
In addition to being used as stage lights for dance routines, the Q-Washes worked very well as audience lights in the large arena, thanks to their intense output. As a result of their colour, movement and brightness, the lightshow in Puerto Rico did exactly what its designers hoped it would do: make a special concert even more engaging and memorable for a local audience.
(Jim Evans)
