To the uninitiated, the staging for Kylie’s Tension Tour looks rather simplistic, with little in the way of backdrops, flamboyant costumes, over-the-top styling and other fluff you may have associated with previous Kylie shows. Unfortunately, most audiences would not see the complexity behind the apparently ‘simplistic’ design.
The show was spectacular, with bold colour choices and stunning screen visuals. The stage was large, and a catwalk and a B-stage ensured interaction between Kylie and her adoring fans.
Kylie delivered one hell of a concert, not a stage show. The focus was on her and the music; she did not disappoint, and by the end of her performance, even the harshest critics could not fail to be won over.
“The show is set in the present moment and focuses on Kylie and her music,” commented Rob Sinclair, Creative & Lighting Designer. “We tried to present her at the centre of everything without distraction. It’s a chance for her and her audience to spend time together.
“The show is very screen-based. Three large upstage surfaces, two side screens, the band on video cubes and the flown square. It’s a clean, modern world that sits well with the music of the Tension albums.”
Sinclair surrounded himself with people he described as the best, most generous, and hard-working team.
“So many of the people on this show are true friends, and it makes me so happy to continue working with them,” he added. “Of course, Kylie is involved every step of the way and has accurate and valuable creative input on everything.”
Sinclair notes that the show encountered the usual hurdles of budget, time, and physics but adds that they navigated all of them reasonably well.
When asked about fixture choice, he says he hates doing this in the trade press, but they’re just lights.
“These days, the different types are pretty interchangeable, and they all work well. I choose the fixture types and am guided on exact specs by vendor availability. I wish it were a better story than that!
“Maybe the only unusual things are the Robe BMFL Spots. We try to avoid using LED Robospots due to the low CRI in high-power LED fixtures. I have a whole lecture I can give on demand. It’s very detailed and tends to put people to sleep.”
Sinclair collaborated with some extraordinarily talented individuals, including Sophie Muller, who created the original films, and Luke Hall Studios, who produced most of the content. Steve Anderson, the musical director who has been with Kylie for 30 years, does an incredible job of breathing new life into older songs, making them all feel current and contemporary.
“I think we achieved what we wanted to do,” said Sinclair. “It’s a very different type of Kylie show, but it is one that I love watching. She’s a genuinely inspirational performer and nails being at the centre of everything every night.”
Production
You can soon tell that the Kylie camp is happy, with many of her crew notching up many years with her. Production Manager Kevin Hopgood has worked with her since 2001, adding that it is a welcoming, inclusive camp.
“Our audience is a complete mix from children to grandparents and all types of diversity,” he continued. “ We try to represent that in the personnel on the tour as well. Many women are working on the tour, and it’s very diverse in every sense. It’s incredibly diverse in every sense. We do that consciously, but it also feels like a completely natural thing to do with Kylie. We try to be forward-thinking in every sense. Changing the world, changing the industry, and trying to be at the forefront.”
Hopgood comments that Kylie’s past tours have been theatrical, with props and narrative-heavy elements, whereas this one is ‘digital’ and more screen-based than content-driven.
“We’re trying to be very contemporary with the look, very much Kylie at the centre of it as always, but trying to get her connecting with the audience with the thrust and a C stage,” he said. “She’s walking up the aisles, high-fiving people on the way! The show has an extensive digital footprint with the screens and lasers, so it’s quite a techie visual.”
The tour began in Australia after a week of band rehearsals in London, two more weeks with Kylie and some choreography work in Melbourne, and then some floor-based rehearsals just with the stage at Perth’s HBF Stadium. Full production rehearsals took place at Perth’s RAC Arena before the first run of shows.
“Australia has great buildings, crews and local resources,” said Hopgood. “It’s got challenging in other parts of the world to find rehearsal spaces and those resources. “Whenever I get involved in a tour, I’m first looking for rehearsal space because it’s a premium in Europe and North America. Maybe some of that’s a little easier with the venues here, depending on the time of year.
“Having said that, Perth is far from anywhere, so resources took some challenges, but it went smoothly. We wanted to stay in warmer climates for the whole year. We’ve conducted a couple of tours starting in Europe at the beginning of the year, and it hasn’t been easy. That’s quite challenging when going through Scandinavia in February with a show with fountains! The cold makes load-ins and load-outs quite tricky, so we are trying to follow the sun to a fair degree during the tour. That was one of the briefs!”
Solotech is the world’s primary gear provider, but the tour used local vendors in Australia: Chameleon Touring Systems for lights, TDC for video, and JPJ for audio.
“We’re universally touring with our control package of consoles and control equipment,” remarked Hopgood. “ER Productions is doing our lasers and special effects, and they now have a base here in Australia, too.”
Lighting
Sinclair’s long-time associate Ali Pike lit the show with José Lorenzo and Matt Jones as Programmers. Lorenzo was on tour as the Lighting Director.
“Rob tells us what the picture is, and we make it happen!” he said.
The production rehearsals and first run of shows took place in Australia, with significant fixture substitutions immediately. The spec called for 113 x Robe Robin Forte; unfortunately, those numbers were unavailable in Australia, so Ayrton Dominos and Martin MAC Viper XIPs came to the rescue.
“We go to the USA next, where we’ll revert to the Robin Fortes and stay with them the rest of the tour,” commented Lorenzo. “It involves cloning and swapping when we get to the States, but it’s always doable, and thankfully, the technology we have nowadays makes it quite simple.
Lorenzo remarks that it’s very exciting to see the comeback of the Viper as an LED fixture; adding the colour mixing, as always with Martin, is cool. “I haven’t missed any features compared to the Robin Fortes. The crew loves the MAC Viper XIP because it’s a couple of kilograms lighter than the original Viper, and it’s easy to travel with on pre-rigged trusses and is a fast fixture.
“Then we’ve got Ayrton Dominos, which is probably the brightest of the Ayrton range. We use them mainly for key lighting on the show. They have three wheels of colour correction and CMY mixing that help when we’re trying to get the exact tones for the skin colour of the guys we’ve got on stage.”
Lorenzo is excited to have forty-eight Chauvet COLORado PXL Curve in the rig. He cites the zoom range and colour mixing as stand-out features.
“For such a small pixel and such a small amount of space, they’ve managed to fit a powerful chip with a nice zoom range on each one of the pixels, and it’s helping us with backlight on the show. It’s also a relatively new product, and it’s always nice to have new hands-on toys as soon as they become available. They play a crucial game on the show, especially backlight, as they go wide and are well-diffused and frosted.”
The lighting setup has all MAC Viper XIPs on the stage, overhead, and floor. They merge with 114 x Chauvet Color Strike Ms, which define the shape of the stage.
“I like Color Strikes; it’s a very effective fixture. It’s the perfect eye candy choice at the moment. The picture we’re trying to draw here on this show is square; the design is very square. It’s all straight angles, and having Color Strikes is pretty much the same. We’re looking for that horizontal picture, and they just added it to that square look of the stage, which is fantastic.”
The PXL Curves are positioned on two lines upstage, just above them. The Dominos are spread across the room and on four front-of-house trusses. They provide the leading key light for the front of the main stage, catwalk, and satellite stage.
Robe BMFL followspots light Kylie and some of the dancers when needed. Lorenzo comments that they’re so much nicer than big beams from the back of the venue.
“The advantage of using moving heads as followspots is that we can tune the white as we go,” Lorenzo remarked. “One of the main issues you have with traditional follow spots is they look too green or too blue, and then you have to swap gels until you find the actual colour temperature. Now, reaching the right colour temperature is achievable by scrolling an encoder and getting to the correct Kelvin for what we are trying to achieve in this show.”
Lastly, the rig features twelve Claypaky Sharpys, specifically designed to light the mirror ball, a feat they were born to do. “I don’t think they will go away as far as we’ve got mirrorballs in rigs. They do what’s required of them and are punchy and narrow.”
The custom-made mirrorball spins thanks to a battery-powered motor that gets charged between shows. The battery and motor are located within the mirror ball to prevent cables from dropping from the rigging.
Like all departments, the lighting is timecoded and triggered by Will Sanderson, the Playback Engineer, and Lorenzo runs macros for every song.
“We’ll recall the song before they actually start playing it, and that will just do its own thing, press play, and I just go through it,” revealed Lorenzo. “All the followspots are at my fingertips, with every followspot on a different fader. We program most of it as well. We know which ones we will use in every song based on the dancers’ and leading artist’s blocking. But then I can also alter this if, at any point, anything changes while on the show.”
Lorenzo runs an MA Lighting grandMA3 full-size console in Mode 3, which he is delighted to use.
“It’s been a long journey to get where we are with MA3, but we’re pleased. It’s consistent now. I think it’s the platform to go to nowadays, especially for this scale of shows, and I’m just looking forward to seeing what new features we will see from MA Lighting in the future.”
SFX
The stunning laser show is programmed by Andre Turner, with ER Productions providing the SFX, including 24 BB4, ten AT-30, six Stadium Shot MK II, six Stadium Blasters, four Swirl Fan MKII, six Low Smoke Generators, six Viper Deluxe V2, and two Unique Hazers, as well as streamers and multicoloured slow fall confetti.
However, Kylie’s stunning entrance in a diamond created by lasers has everyone talking. It is designed with eight Kinekt Micro and ER’s most powerful Atolla range laser, an AT-100, and sets the standard for the rest of the show.
“Kylie rises from the stage during the blackout,” elaborated Alfie Broad, SFX Crew Chief. “There is a large platform on wheels, onto which the AT-100 fixes in a specific spot. So, as Kylie goes up on the swing, my SFX tech brings that laser around, and it’s good to go. We also have two flown AT-30s up in the halo with eight more around the stage: four on lifting columns in the upstage and four on lifting columns in the downstage.”
The Low Smoke Generators fire up during the opening to help create a more fabulous mystical atmosphere.
Video
Steve Price, Video Director, had the luxury of doing just one mix for one person throughout the show rather than multiple mixes to screens of different shapes and sizes simultaneously.
“I have nine cameras, five with operators, two robo cameras, a locked-off camera, and a roaming camera on an RF link to Video World, which one of my pit camera operators uses when Kylie travels from the main stage to the C stage at the back,” said Price. “Rob Sinclair has a clear vision of how he wanted the show to look on the screens. Kylie is unbelievably professional, delightful to work with, very relaxed, and a joy to be around.”
The operated cameras were Panasonic AK-UC4000 4K cameras: two with 90x UHD Canon Box Lenses, two with 24x UHD Canon Lenses, and one with a 14x 4K UHD Canon Lens. The robotic cameras were Panasonic AW-RP160KEJ PTZ cameras, and the locked-off camera was a Micro Studio 4K Camera with a wide lens.
Price ran a Ross TouchDrive switcher using portrait screens, favouring a solo artist. He adds that he enjoys the reflections from the stage floor, as they give the cameras many opportunities, as does her wardrobe.
“The glimmer glass filters that we use bring out the shine of her dresses,” added Price. “It’s a big stage for such a tiny person to fill, but she manages to do it.”
All LED screens are Roe Visual CB5 except for the risers, which are Roe Black Quartz LED Panels. Brompton SX40 processing is used for the CB5 screens, whilst the risers utilise Megapixel Helios.
Ed White looked after video content, running a mostly time-coded show, although there were a few manual cues.
“It’s three disguise GX3 servers, and we’re not using any notch from this show,” he explained. “Luke Hall Studio and Sophie Muller made the content, and it’s incredible.”
Show Photos: Erik Melvin
This article first appeared in the April edition of Lighting & Sound International magazine.
