Supporting the Arts
Industrial scale technology in Cirque du Soleil’s KÀ
—by Stephanie
Gooch
|
Guy Laliberté |
From its humble
beginnings on the streets
of Quebec City twenty years ago, Cirque du Soleil has gained
international recognition through the creative impetus
of its
founder, Guy Laliberté, bringing the circus acrobatics of street
performers inside to the theatre stage, and elevating their public
esteem to that of fine arts. A few years ago, Laliberté envisioned a
new kind of act that would blend the talents of his performers with
a narrative plot. He describes this show as “the most theatrical
show we have ever done.”
|
Robert Lepage |
Laliberté approached Robert Lepage with the mandate to “create
nothing less than an epic saga.” Lepage, creator and director of the
new show in Las Vegas, KÀ, has directed theatre, feature films,
operas and even rock concerts, but nothing that involved the
magnitude of this production. In an interview prior to the opening,
Lepage opined, “I think that Cirque du Soleil is very courageous
right now, because it’s trying to cross the boundaries of all the
different disciplines — you have acrobats playing characters, you
have actors doing acrobatic acts, blending everybody’s talents and
trying to invent a new form of storytelling…to keep the interest of
the spectator on the edge.” Not only do the actors and acrobats
cross disciplines, but the theatre itself crosses the boundaries
between industry and the arts, while keeping not only the audience,
but even the performers “on the edge.”
|
Guy Caron |
Lepage worked with Cirque veteran and director of creation for KÀ,
Guy Caron, to devise an epic set in an empire existing “somewhere
between the air and the imagination.” In fact, the stage appears to
float in the air above an Abyss. Regarding the working relationship
between the similarly titled artists, Caron says, “We don’t have a
division of labor.
It’s a fusion. At the very beginning, I was
working in planning and organization. When [Lepage] arrived, I
opened all the valves, primed and ready to let him run the
machine…At the moment he is the heart of the project, which is what
I used to be, sometimes I am the soul, I suppose, but he is the
heart.” This sort of integration characterizes the entire show. As
Caron notes, “Cirque du Soleil is being reinvented with this show.
We started with the script. The script was the element that dictated
the way the theatre is built, and it determined how the sets would
be used.”
|
Mark Fisher’s sketch
brought into reality
photo credit: Amir Pirzadeh |
Rebuilding the entire theatre
For a show that is expected to captivate audiences ten times a week
for the next ten years, they were given $165+ million and a large
theatre at Las Vegas’
MGM Grand hotel-casino, which they gutted and
rebuilt specifically for this production. Gutting the theatre opened
up the possibilities for designing the stage and the lighting in
unconventional ways. Having designed international rock concert
sets, British stage architect, Mark Fisher, was called in to set the
show in a unique manner. “In a rock show, the scenery is much more
of a background. Here it’s actually part of the landscape in which
the performers live and move to create their show.” Using his
approach of integrating the audience/performer relationship, his
design incorporates the whole theatre.
|
Mark Fisher |
Even the seating was replaced — complete with a sound system built
into each of the almost 2000 seats as well as in the main theatre.
The sound designer, Jonathan Deans, was challenged to keep the
audience’s attention. Rather than taking a conventional approach, he
opted for an individual experience with a left/right forward-facing
system, with 180 outputs. Deans explains, “I want to feel that I’m
in a concert space, but I also want to feel as though the sound is
in me, on me and in my face.” The “primary sound is designed to
envelop the audience” to equalize the experience for each spectator,
while a multi-channel system focuses and targets specific sound
effects “that seem to dance, drag and push each member of the
audience into a more immersive” experience. “We take the sound and
shred it into multiple sections,” Deans says. “It will go out and
fly around the auditorium shredded, and then come back into that
[original] sound. Will the audience know that is happening? No. But
they will feel something different is happening.” Moreover, the
lighting is unusual. Says Luc Lafortune, lighting designer, “I’m
treating the space as if it were a theatre upside-down. Either the
lighting is not apparent, or when it is apparent, it’s coming from
the basement.”
|
Stage Lift 5 bears a boat in the Storm
scene. |
Mark Fisher’s initial sketches for the novel theatre design were
translated into engineering models by McLaren Engineering Group,
West Nyack, NY, an international consulting agency that offers
structural and civil engineering services for many industries. They
developed the structural and mechanical designs, as well as
kinematic studies of the assemblies required to put those ideas into
a plan, including “two of the largest and heaviest show action
elements ever constructed for theatre.” Then, they acted on-site as
project integrators for the complex motion elements.
Most of the catwalks were replaced with custom structures built to
integrate with the show’s technical and design needs. Most shows
require these support structures to be hidden, yet an early decision
to go “Industrial Wasteland Modern,” as Jay Reichgott of McLaren
Engineering puts it, allowed the scenery to retain its functional
and rugged look. Regarding the dominating feature of the stage area
— a freestanding 300,000-lb hydraulic gantry crane — Reichgott
comments “the hydraulic cylinders [seem to] hang out in the middle
of space.”The stages
Actually, there is no stage, in the normal sense of the word.
Peering over the orchestra pit, one looks down into a basement
several floors below. There are actually two main stages and five
additional platforms that move into place via industrial-scale
hydraulics and compact electromechanical lifts used in both theatre
and industrial applications. These stages are used to create an
entire empire, from sea voyages to sand cliffs to rainforests and
fiery sky battles.
|
Safety net & winch. |
The pièce-de-résistance of these stages is the 25- x 50-ft Sand
Cliff Deck. The 6-ft thick platform includes three internal lifts
accessible to the performers to help them move around behind the
scenes. Also included in the deck are 80 2-ft long pegs used by the
performers for acrobatic routines when the deck is tilted for cliff
scenes, but retractable when a flat surface is required. The pegs
are powered by linear actuators capable of providing full extension
at 8 ft/sec. The 80,000-lb deck can be lifted up 70 ft from below
the stage at a rate of 2 ft/sec, rotated 360 degrees and tilted at a
rate of 2.5 deg/sec up to 100 degrees (10 degrees further than the
vertical—90 degrees). An inverted gantry crane is used to move the
deck on a giant mechanical arm attached to hydraulic cylinders
running along two support columns. Five 250 hp pumps are required to
power the hydraulic crane, with a 3500 gallon oil reservoir. Because
the “below-the-hook load” (not counting the stage platform) runs
about 300,000 lbs, the massive crane needed to be free-standing, as
the theatre was constructed to pre-1997 grandfathered seismic
building codes, and the newer, more stringent codes require the
crane to be able to withstand an earthquake by itself without
increasing the load on the building. According to Reichgott,
designing and building this structure was a challenge to “build a
prototype on site, since you can’t build a test stand with a 70-foot
lift.” The installation was initially gauged for approximately two
months, but it took about twice as long in practiceAnother stage, the Tatami Deck drawer slide, measures 30- x 30-ft
and weighs between 75,000 and 100,000 lbs. From its home position,
the deck slides forward almost 50 ft at full travel, to “float” over
the Abyss. Two electric motors are used to power this stage, with
hydraulic brakes to control deceleration. For the Slave Cage act,
this deck receives the Wheel of Death, a massive 5-wheel contraption
used for acrobatic acts, which is removed from the platform via
winch during other scenes
Five additional stage lifts are used to add performance space, as
well as moving props and artists during the show. Each lift uses
four to seven Spiralift tubular thrust screws drive movement. These
thrust screws are provided by Gala Theatrical Equipment, a custom
entertainment industry subsidiary of Paco Corp., Saint-Hubert, QC,
which makes standard industrial lift systems for materials handling.
The main advantages to the Spiralift are that it can be mounted on
any sound structural base with no excavation or caissons, and that
it provides a compact closed-height/total-lifting-travel ratio with
a natural precision of <1 mm. The design consists of a coiled,
flexible flat spring that expands as a vertically oriented spiral
steel band is inserted in I-beam fashion to create a continuous
stable column. Standard lifts measure 6-, 9- and 18-in. dia., with
collapsed heights from about 8½ to 14 in., extending up to 12 to 40
ft, respectively, and sustaining loads up to 8000 to 40,000 lbs,
respectively. For the show, the stage lifts move a maximum of 25 ft
vertically. Four of the lifts have a maximum speed of 20 ft/sec,
while the fifth can travel as fast as 60 ft/sec.
|
Jaque Paquin |
Moving the stages
Over 300 axes of motion are required to be controlled in this show,
including the 80 pins in the Sand Cliff Deck. Not only the stages
need to be moved, but also the rigging for the airborne acrobatics
as well as various other prop elements that are moved throughout the
show. Tons of rigging equipment is hidden up in the rafters with
uncompromising safety measures
“There’s a constant risk of artists falling. In some sequences of
the show that could be a fall of a hundred feet,” says Jaque Paquin,
KÀ’s acrobatic equipment and rigging designer. Hidden underneath the
center moving stages, a safety net is stretched to catch intentional
falls of performers — as well as any unintended mishaps. However,
because the Sand Cliff Deck sometimes needs to be moved to the
basement to make room for the Tatami Deck, the safety net is
retractable, and its tension is monitored and maintained by the
motion control system. After the safety concerns have been met,
Paquin says of the creative aspect, “I wanted to convey a feeling of
emptiness…The idea is not to suggest danger, but to suggest
openness. The intention is to have everything appear to be floating
in air.”
|
HMI for controlling hydraulic gantry. |
When the stages and platforms are in their ‘home’ positions, the
surfaces are integrated; however, the two main stages and 3 of the
smaller platforms have intersecting motion envelopes, requiring a
dedicated “interlock system” that acts as a governor for the motion
control. It has separate position encoders and limit switches that
lock out conflicting axes of motion overriding the regular stage
controllers before a collision can occur. The system is implemented
on a dedicated PLC with hardwired limits and no operator interface.
This interlock system tracks not only the current vertical
positions, but also the orientation, speed and acceleration,
calculating necessary deceleration times to avoid anticipated
collision conditions.
|
photo credit: Denise Truscello
The Tatami deck with/without the Wheel
of Death.
photo credit: Tomas
Muscionico |
Movement is coordinated through the NOMAD control system from Stage
Technologies Inc., London, UK. The NOMAD system is internationally
known as a modular, multi-user control for theatre and entertainment
applications. The system consists of a central computer coordinating
PLCs and drives, with portable Control Point consoles that can be
operated by any number of users. Each drive in the system is a
motion controller, providing per-axis control; thus, the processing
power is kept local to avoid extra signal transfer issues. Position
and velocity data is sent to the drive, which translates the data
into the necessary command signals and then provides position and
velocity feedback to the central system. Once the main control
system is in place, any number of consoles can plug into the system
via Ethernet. Each Ethernet outlet is programmed with an “ident” at
each control point, allowing the system administrator to limit
control to idents where the motion being controlled is visible. Not
only can position and velocity be controlled, but speed can be
changed in mid-movement for safety or choreography purposes, as
well. Designed for theatre applications, the NOMAD system is mainly
used for electrical systems, with only 3 or 4% of theatre
applications using hydraulics. Stage Technologies jointly developed
software integrated into the drivers with Siemens, which supplies
their standard controllers. Each control box is a self-contained
modular unit with its own air conditioning. For the gantry crane,
Atlantic Industrial Technologies, Islandia, NY, designed the
hydraulics system, using cylinders, accumulators and drives from
Parker/Hannifin. The massive structure uses an OSVACS servo valve
and actuator control system from Omega (a division of RG Group,
York, PA), with high-flow electrohydraulic valves and IVSG
infinitely-variable spool geometry technology to provide exceptional
efficiency and position/force control. In conjunction with the UMAC
controller from Delta Tau Data Systems Inc., Chatsworth, CA, system
variances between the four vertical cylinders were maintained at
under 1/8 in. All axes are controlled via closed loop using the
MACRO fiber-optic communication system, which was selected for the
1500 ft between nodes; the MACRO loop offers distance and shield
immunity. The 100-degree tilt is controlled via an additional four
cylinders paired by two hydraulic servo valves. In addition, the two
safety nets underneath are each controlled by nine hydraulic winches
with a dead band of ±4V. These 18 identical winches are controlled
by Delta Tau controllers, yet the native language is not
object-oriented, leading to a nightmare for maintaining all 18
identical codes. Tisfoon Ulterior Systems Inc., Raleigh, NC, used
the template function of their Code Generator to transform the
programming environment into object-oriented function. Additional
mooring software was written for the winches to provide constant
pressure to keep the net tight as it was positioned.
|
350 cubic feet of cork "beach" before
it is dramatically dumped into the abyss.
photo credit: Tomas Muscionico |
To coordinate the hydraulic controls with the NOMAD system, Amir
Pirzadeh, president of Tisfoon, was contracted to provide a bridge.
He selected the Delta Tau controllers along with his own company’s
PC104 controller with a dual RAID harddrive system to host the
VCR-capable HMI. Pirzadeh’s system receives show queues from the
NOMAD system in UDP format. The HMI translates these commands for
the Delta Tau software, then reports all pressures, load cells,
positions and I/O states back to the operator. The VCR feature on
the HMI records the data from each screen for use in troubleshooting
and maintenance. According to Pirzadeh, “There were many challenges
in the design phase of the project. We ran into a few hydraulic and
mechanical problems. At each turn, we provided suggestions and
software workarounds. We wrote our own closed loop PLCs to control
the load balancing among the cylinders for both lift and tilt axes.
We also wrote closed loop control for charging the lift cylinders
before releasing brakes. This provided a smooth transition from
open-loop (brakes-applied) to closed-loop (motion). The fail safe
emergency stop routine is able to stop the massive 150-ton stage in
1.8 seconds from its top speed of 24 inches per second.”
Matthew Whelan |
The “Bird Effect”
Besides the movement of the stages, there are many other interesting
motion control effects involved in the show. In keeping with the
overall theme of integrating audience with performance, the “Bird
Effect” deserves special mention in any discussion of motion
control. This effect uses five winches to fly a manned bird puppet
over the heads of the audience in a rather complicated spiral
motion. Four of the winches are attached to each corner to create
movement, while a fifth winch maintains control over the safe
working load. To control the bird, Visual Creator software from
Stage Technologies plots the complicated geometry of 3D paths and
can control the payout of three or more winches — much like
marionette strings — to effect movement.
Motion for the show is capitalized upon as part of the
entertainment. Says Matthew Whelan, production technical director,
“In KÀ, the machinery is so impressive that their movement becomes a
[dance] number in itself and the director maximized this in KÀ. For
example, we use our main deck as a beach. It is covered in
granulated cork to recreate sand. At the end of the number, we tilt
the deck and dump the cork into the pit. The effect is quite
outstanding. The audience does see the lift movements during the
show but there is also a complete other show going on in the pit
where the lifts move out of sightline to allow scenic pieces to move
from level to level in a specific choreography to manage limited
floor space.”Has this discussion really evoked a clear image of the show? Not
really. As theatre and set designer Fisher comments, “The unique
thing about going to see a live show like…Cirque du Soleil is that
you can’t own it. It only exists in your memory. And that’s what
we’re creating when we do all this work to build the theatre and put
the show in it. That’s its true value, the fact you have to go and
see it to experience it.”
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