The Alpha Spot projectors offer a rich and innovative graphic section, featuring twenty gobos on three wheels, rotating prisms, an animation disc and infinite colours (CMY colour system + Linear CTO + 7-color wheel). Clay Paky created the gobos for the luminaries by following Holmes' exacting specifications.
Ben Hammett, the PRG Lighting technician who is responsible for the Shakira lights on a daily basis, adds, "The Clay Paky lights have been great; they are very reliable, and have needed very little service."
The entire crew rehearsed for the tour in Barcelona, Spain, where PRG's vice president of concert touring John Lobel attests to receiving superlative support from Clay Paky. "Everybody we dealt with, from Francesco Romagnoli in Italy to Eric Mueller in Texas have really been paying attention to the details," Lobel says. "They have been fantastic - really helpful and enthusiastic, just great."
Production manager Jake Berry (whose credits include the Rolling Stones, U2, and many others) heads up an impressive team, which also includes set designer Jaume De Laiguana, and tour director Steve Dixon. Lighting programmer/director Dan Boland recently left the tour in the capable hands of Graeme Nicol, who will oversee the lighting as the tour heads south of the border to Mexico. Then Shakira will return to South America for shows in her native Columbia before wrapping up the year with stops in Chile and Argentina.
(Jim Evans)
