The House of Dancing Water

City of Dreams, Macau (September 17 2010 – present)

Official website: http://thehouseofdancingwater.com

Created and Directed by Franco Dragone
Lighting by Luc Lafortune

Stage lifts by Handling Specialty

Show Facts

  • $250 million cost
  • 130 tech crew per show

Links
Interview with lighting designer Luc Lafortune

Documents


LSI: House of Dancing Water (January 2011)
[2.93Mb PDF]
From Lighting & Sound International

Trailer

Automation by Stage Technologies

The 2000-seat House of Dancing Water was custom built to accommodate the new Dragone aqua-acrobatic spectacular that is conducted in and around a liquid stage. Stage Technologies was brought on board to design, supply and install a 141-axis automation system, controlled by a powerful combination of 2 fixed Acrobat∙G6 desks, 2 portable Nomad desks, and 4 handheld Solo controllers. The system includes 20 heavyweight BigTow 490s and a 40-unit track and trolley system, which can power fly or performer fly up to 250kg at 3.5m/sec. Lineset winches are rated to 2,000kg at 2½m/s allowing ultra fast changeovers of Dragone’s characteristically complex and load-heavy sets and the 100m x 60m grid mirrors the entire theatre and pool areas. The Stage Technologies system also controls 11 pool stage lifts.

In addition, equipment was provided for Dragone’s rehearsals at Alfacam studios in Lint, Belgium. The rehearsal studio contains stage tracks, winch trolleys and point hoists, mimicking the main system’s functionality and allowing the automation programmers to rehearse and programme the show act by act, both with real world movements and also in an offline, virtual, 3-D configuration. The studio control system also used six local control joysticks.

  • 2 portable Nomad control consoles (+ Nomad for training and 6 joysticks)
  • 2 fixed Acrobat∙G6 control consoles (+ Acrobat∙G6 for training)
  • 4 Solo handheld controllers
  • MaxisSI theatre automation control system
  • AU:tour mobile control racks for training studio
  • 40-unit track winch and trolley lift winch system (+ 2-unit system for training)
  • 18 line hoists
  • 24 point hoists (+ 8 point hoists for training)
  • 2 ‘human chandelier’, high-capacity winches
  • 2 fast winches (7 meters per second)
  • 4 curtain track winches
  • Control for 8 hydraulic stage lifts and 3 vomitory lifts in the pool stage

 

 
 
 
 
 
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Automation Video

A video showing the movement of the stage lifts in the pool, with corresponding animation and data, as displayed for operators in the show’s control room (from Lighting and Sound International Online)