Over 100 Robe moving lights illuminated the court as part of a lighting scheme designed by Michael Chan and Tom Langridge. While Tom ensured that the court was lit specifically for the TV cameras and special requirements like slomo, Michael looked after lighting for the Opening Ceremony and then for general ambience and effects lighting throughout the schedule of matches, including creating WOW-moments for the player entrances.
To assist with this, he used 40 x BMFL Spots, 40 x Pointes and 21 Robe Squares, all supplied to the event by The Show Company, together with other moving lights and LED PARs mostly rigged on trusses in the roof.
Eight of the Squares - a 5 x 5 LED matrix of 25 individually mappable pixels with five independent zooming layers and continuous pan-and-tilt rotation - were rigged on four trussing towers both sides of the main player's entrance and used to ramp up the excitement as the players entered the court, looking great on camera and live.
The other 19 Squares were on a circular truss in the roof, trimmed at about 15 metres above the tennis court and utilized for the opening ceremony together with the BMFLs and Pointes.
The OC was a 15-minute entertainment show starting with a lighthearted house-keeping segment by ActiveSG kids, followed by a four-minute dance presentation by the Jeffrey Dance Academy, choreography by Jeffrey and Ryan Tan for which a four sided 10m tall by 5m wide projection screen was dropped into the middle of the court via double Kabuki.
The Kabuki cloth dropped to the floor for a dramatic reveal of singer Sophie Beem and her two dancers inside. Beyoncé prodigy Beem performed her song "Girls will be Girls" which also featured 80 dancers from the Jeffrey Dance Academy.
The OC ended with a simple ceremony and rousing rendition of the Singapore national anthem.
Others involved in the Opening Ceremony included creative director Beatrice Chia-Richmond and Technical Director Kenny Wong.
The 2016 WTA Finals tournament was contested by eight singles players and eight doubles teams with Slovakian Dominika Cibulkov
