WI has previously worked with Dragone on several projects, explains project manager Koen Peeters, and for this one the show creators turned to them to provide solutions for several staging conundrums, all of which had to be delivered in an extremely short timeframe.
With the tour starting in Russia, crew visas, paperwork and transportation needed special attention, in addition to all the engineering and physical creative work!
The first WI element of the project was to create 14 aluminium flying wings and a kinetic system to make them move. All of these flying elements have an integrated LED lighting system that allows spectacular lighting effects.
All 14 wings were used for five shows at The Kremlin in Moscow that launched the tour, after which 10 wings continued as part of the touring set up.
The second phase of the project for WI was fabricating the intricate stage - which has flooring at 200, 400 and 600mm levels - in three different variants to deal with the different sized venues on the tour.
This was particularly galvanising because of the numerous curved shapes involved in all the downstage and offstage elements of each stage, entailing the manufacture of many different parts to produce exactly the correct contours when the three versions of the stage were fully assembled.
Each of the three stage levels also encompass LED light boxes on their downstage and offstage edges. Additionally, the 600 mm level contains a trap-door for small stage props and houses three hydraulic scissor lifts which are used for performer show moves.
Set designer Marcos Vi
