Last September, Westminster College, a private liberal arts school in Salt Lake City, inaugurated Florence J. Gillmor Hall, a modern facility equipped with state-of-the-art instruction, rehearsal, and performance spaces for the school’s music, dance, and theatre programs. Elation lighting has been integrated into the hall’s dance studio and performance space, a package that includes Fuze Profile™, Rayzor 760™ and Seven Batten 14™ luminaires, along with the first U.S. installation of the company’s innovative KL Profile FC™ ellipsoidal fixture.
Florence J. Gillmor Hall
Florence J. Gillmor Hall is a 26,000 square-foot expansion of the college’s Jewett Center for the Performing Arts and the Emma Eccles Jones Conservatory. Besides the Beverley Taylor Sorensen and Joan Taylor Fenton Performance Studio, the recent expansion added practice rooms, a theatre rehearsal space, a choir rehearsal room, and a 93-seat recital hall.
The performance studio, which can seat approximately 120 audience members, offers an intimate atmosphere suitable for showcasing various types of dance performances. Spencer Brown, who has been affiliated with the school since 1998, has served as a full-time technical director for the past 13 years. He has also been the resident lighting designer for the college, lighting numerous shows and occasionally teaching classes as an adjunct professor. Brown has extensive knowledge of dance lighting, gained from 10 years as production manager and resident designer for the Trisha Brown Dance Company in New York, where he also had the opportunity to collaborate with Baryshnikov on a performance.
Elation connection
While working for Oasis Stage Werks, a leading theatrical rental house in Salt Lake City, Brown developed a relationship with Kraig Knight, who currently serves as Elation Regional Sales Representative for the Rocky Mountain region. Brown recounts the journey that led him to Elation. “Back when I started at Westminster College, I had bought a couple Elation fixtures (Platinum Spot 5R Pros) because I wanted the students to learn about automated moving lights. They are over 10 years old now and we’ve had very few issues with them. A few years later, when Knight used our black box for a demo, he left a few Elation fixtures behind for me to play with, and I loved those too. Bottom line is that my experience with Elation and Elation fixtures has always been really good.”
KL Profile FC
During the process of creating a fixture package for the dance space, Brown collaborated with Knight, who provided product recommendations and sent several samples for testing. “Then he called me one day and told me about the new KL Profile FC, which was just about to launch,” Brown shares. “We really liked them but the thing that really sold me on them was Elation’s methodology in developing a new ellipsoidal. They were able to take their proven zoom technology from their moving heads and integrate that into an ellipsoidal fixture, keeping the smooth movement and widespread. It doesn’t have the problems I’ve seen that other manufacturers have with zoom optics, which is often based on older technology.”
With an integrated 6° to 50° manual zoom, the KL Profile FC simplifies ellipsoidal lighting by eliminating the need for additional lens tubes, reducing cost and complexity. It houses a 305W RGBMA LED engine (output exceeds 10,000 lumens) and includes a 16-bit rotating gobo slot and full blackout framing system. A Fresnel wash conversion kit is available as an option.
As an experienced designer, Brown understands that sometimes lenses must be swapped out to achieve better coverage, “but with the integrated zoom of the KL Profile FC, I’ll never have to do that.” The designer clearly admires innovation and the emphasis on research and development. “I’ve seen it time and again in our industry,” he says. “R&D is expensive but if you invest in it, you can leapfrog over the competition. To me it looks like that has been the case at Elation. The company is matching and in many cases exceeding the quality of other companies.”
Other Elation gear
Brown says a lighting system of mostly side light and down light was required. Although not as important when lighting dance, front light was also a requisite, especially as the space would also be hosting other events and flexibility was needed. Other Elation fixtures in the dance space’s new lighting rig include the Fuze Profile, LED moving head framing fixtures that the designer says give him a wide array of visually interesting looks and add another layer of possibilities. He says he can use them for specials, full gobo washes across the stage, or animation looks. “I’ve been super happy with the RGBMA dimming engine in those, the color mixing is great.”
The Rayzor 760 LED wash effects he can zoom down for a tight look or spread wide for a full downlight wash. The Seven Batten 14 strip lights provide a full-spectrum of color from a 7-color LED engine and work primarily as cyc lights. The lighting gear in the performance studio is spread across overhead electrics with some on booms. The school purchased the lighting gear through Elation dealer Performance Audio in Salt Lake City.
Further information from Elation Professional: www.elationlighting.com
