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Outline for Janadriya Festival in Saudi Arabia
The 21st Janadriya Festival is held with the patronage of Crown Prince Abdullah Bin Abdullaziz Al Saud, who became King of Saudi Arabia following the death of his brother, King Fahd. Since then, the festival's opening ceremony has been attended by the Saudi Arabian King.
Janadriya is a village 40 kilometres from the capital Riyadh, famous for hosting big scale reproductions of the five Saudi regions. The show in question was the impressive opening ceremony of the five-day festival. The festival’s main contractor was Saudi Arabian company Rhythm Media Production, whose owner, Futtais Bughna, was charge of the direction and production of the entire event.
The art director and writer was Moneer Al Quatani, while the scenography was by the International Theatre of Dubai. Water effects were supplied by Magical Water (Dubai) and other major suppliers included Xenon hardware projection and moving screen, Sound & Light Show (Belgium), video projection and editing by Pibiesse (Italy), lighting consultancy and supplier of Avolites lighting desks and High End moving head fixtures from Avolites Middle East (Tony Shembish), production manager was Franco Comanducci, technical advisor and lighting designer was Pablo Nofri, lighting director Adriano Sanson and set designer Giovanni Ravagnani.
Different to the previous year, the 2006 Janadriya opening ceremony was entirely dedicated to the ascent to the throne of the new King, Abdullah. The show, a crescendo of tribal rhythms, with music specially written for the event by one of the Arab world’s top composers (Abdurab Idris), ended with the Arda, a traditional dance usually performed in ancient times in honour of the king when he won a battle.
The dance was performed by 1,200 extras, armed with traditional Arab swords, and singers on stage were among the most famous in the Arab world and included Mohammed Abdu, Rashid Al Majid and Abdul Majid Abdullah.
As far as Outline equipment was concerned, the system used was supplied by Riyadh’s Rhythm Media Production, and consisted in twelve Butterfly Hi-packs and eight Victor Live twin 18" subwoofers, driven by 12 Outline T6.5 PWM power amplifiers and a pair of Genius 26 DSP processors, plus eight HARD 212 SP wedges.
Outline engineer Francesco Ferretti trained the sound crew and FOH engineer in the use of the V.I.P. simulation/pointing software, specially designed for Butterfly.
All the crew were personally congratulated by the King's staff for the amazing results achieved, which were reported to have surpassed any show ever done previously for such an event.
20th April 2006
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