Blink are no strangers to Kylie - the company produced all the insert material for last year’s seminal ‘Fever’ tour, and a specially commissioned video for her Royal Variety performance. They were approached by renowned Rambert choreographer Rafael Bonachela, who devised 21 to provide imagery for the dance piece, which runs in three sections, and lasts 21 minutes. The soundtrack for the performance has been composed by Benjamin Wallfisch and its lighting design conceived by Chris Davey.
Bonachela asked film production designer/video artist Alan Macdonald, and Kylie’s own personal image maker and stylist, William Baker to design the second seven-minute segment. This section is performed on a totally bare stage apart from the dancers, lighting and Kylie imagery.
MacDonald, Baker and Bonachela approached Blink’s head of production Marcus Viner with the idea of projecting Kylie’s image onto drop-in gauze across the front of the stage, whilst the eight dancers would perform behind. Viner, in turn, recruited the expertise of video engineer Stuart Heaney. They subsequently conducted tests in Rambert’s studios in West London, to establish the equipment needed. Since they would be rear-projecting onto the gauze, Heaney opted for a Barco R18 ELM and sourced it from XL Video.
The video shoot with Kylie took place at Centre Stage studios in central London. 90 minutes of time-coded rushes were then sent to Bonachela, who selected his favourite bits, and returned it. Bonachela and Hollingsworth then fine-tuned the stage work. Blink had previously filmed the performance with a handheld camera at FOH, enabling them to make the necessary calculations to manipulate the image for position and size. Viner then programmed the finally edited video onto an SX hard drive, which is triggered from the soundtrack.
The company had one full in-situ test day at the New Victoria Theatre in Woking, complete with video before the show world-premièred at the Anthony Hopkins Theatre at Theatr Clwyd in Mold, North Wales. Following its run at Sadler’s Wells, 21 will embark on an autumn tour.
