YEREVAN, Armenia — Although the Karen Demirchyan Sport & Cultural Complex, built when Armenia was under Soviet rule 1983, has won awards for some of its unique design features, it also did without some frills, like heating, for its first 20 years. A full restoration program to update the landmark venue began in 2005, and the SCC celebrated a grand reopening Oct. 31. Among other improvements, the venue now has a full complement of lighting gear from Robert Juliat, including profiles, spotlights, followspots and dimmers, which was supplied by City Trade Holding LLC and installed by Business Center Arlekino LLC.
Host to a variety of sporting, concert, social and political events, the revamped venue now has a 10,000-seat sports hall, an ice arena, a concert venue, conference halls, a press center, a 1,300-square-meter foyer, a restaurant with a panoramic view of Yerevan plus other cafeterias, and other halls for sports, entertainment and leisure.
The Robert Juliat equipment is used for the sports hall/ice arena portion of the venue and for concerts. The house rig now includes 32 Robert Juliat 329 HPC 2.5K PCs, 20 Robert Juliat 329HF 2.5K Fresnels, 40 Robert Juliat 714SX2 2000/2500W 15°/40° profiles and 24 Robert Juliat 611SX 1000-watt 11°/26° profiles.
In addition, the venue now has four Robert Juliat Cyrano 2.5K followspots and four Robert Juliat Super Korrigan 1.2K followspots. Dimming gear includes 10 Robert Juliat Tivoli 24 x 16A digital dimmers.
“Robert Juliat is known to be the most desired brand for theatre, arena and concert venue lighting, and it certainly has the best followspots in the world,” said Alexander Davydkin, owner of City Trade Holding and BC Arlekino. “All of its products are ergonomically sound and functional. No one else on the market offers this number of options and has such multi-functional fixtures. The interchangeable lamp modules, for example, are very unusual in a conventional lighting fixture.”
The ice arena in the sports hall has already hosted shows since its opening this year, including the Ilya Overbukh ice-skating show and Evgeniy Plushenko and Edvin Marton's Ice Show, The Stradivari Gold Ice, with participation from Olympic and World champions like Victor Petrenko, Elena Grushina, Ruslan Goncharov, Elena Berejnaya and Suria Bonali.
“We use Robert Juliat equipment in many of our installations in Russia, ” said Davydkin, “including culture, sport venues, theatres, clubs. We have also introduced them to a large number of hire companies here, which has made Robert Juliat very popular in Russia as technical specialists work with these products and see the benefits for themselves. BAMO, the owner of SCC, has been our partner for a long time, so when we worked on their project, we made sure we only installed the best and most reliable equipment at their site.”
For more information, please visit www.robertjuliatamerica.com.
