Corporate Entertainment is a great way for circus performers, dancers and artists of all kinds to get paid for what they do so well while bringing spectacular entertainment to the event. Lumiere Acrobatics performers like other professional artists regularly perform at many large scale events and the thing that is often overlooked by performers and event organizers alike is the lighting.
Lighting has such a powerful impact that it can make or break your performance, especially aerial performance. You can create a wonderful dynamic evocative aerial performance and if the lighting does not adequately show your performance as unfortunately I have experienced and seen on numerous occasions then the audience can’t see the performers properly and this is such a waste of time money and resources for all parties involved.
For those of us who work in the theater, predominantly on stage shows this almost never happens, or if it does it is intentional to serve some narrative. We make time to get the lighting right, and over the course of a season we are able to fine tune the lighting to best serve the performance. What is somewhat ironic is that generally the corporate events have all the latest and greatest lighting and technology, but what they don’t have is “TIME” and this is often why the end result does not fulfill it’s potential.
There is so much going on setting up large scale corporate events like gala dinners, awards ceremonies and product launches of all kinds. The entertainment is most often one small part of an entire evening often with speeches, awards, bands, guest MC’s and much more. There is generally very little time for plotting lighting, and on many occasions the lighting guy just wings it.
My advice to my fellow performers is to have a video of your performance, perhaps a link to a video online that you can send the technical event producer who can pass it on to the lighting operator. Often the operator won’t get to look at it till the day of the performance, but at least they will have a reference. On the big gigs, where your performance is the main entertainment event you may get to make some suggestions as to how the lights are rigged so the performance has the most impact which serves the event company and the guests well, but not often.
As Eduard Manet said – “the principal person in a picture is light”
Lighting has such a powerful impact that it can make or break your performance, especially aerial performance. You can create a wonderful dynamic evocative aerial performance and if the lighting does not adequately show your performance as unfortunately I have experienced and seen on numerous occasions then the audience can’t see the performers properly and this is such a waste of time money and resources for all parties involved.
For those of us who work in the theater, predominantly on stage shows this almost never happens, or if it does it is intentional to serve some narrative. We make time to get the lighting right, and over the course of a season we are able to fine tune the lighting to best serve the performance. What is somewhat ironic is that generally the corporate events have all the latest and greatest lighting and technology, but what they don’t have is “TIME” and this is often why the end result does not fulfill it’s potential.
There is so much going on setting up large scale corporate events like gala dinners, awards ceremonies and product launches of all kinds. The entertainment is most often one small part of an entire evening often with speeches, awards, bands, guest MC’s and much more. There is generally very little time for plotting lighting, and on many occasions the lighting guy just wings it.
My advice to my fellow performers is to have a video of your performance, perhaps a link to a video online that you can send the technical event producer who can pass it on to the lighting operator. Often the operator won’t get to look at it till the day of the performance, but at least they will have a reference. On the big gigs, where your performance is the main entertainment event you may get to make some suggestions as to how the lights are rigged so the performance has the most impact which serves the event company and the guests well, but not often.
As Eduard Manet said – “the principal person in a picture is light”
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