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J & C Joel Supplies Riverdance
Drapes and fabrics specialists J & C Joel has supplied Riverdance’s Far Eastern troupe – the Corrib – with over 30 drapes for their new tour.
It’s the first time the Halifax based company has worked with the world renowned Celtic dancing production, and the project was managed for Joel’s by their international business development manager Fiona Blackett, who worked closely with Riverdance’s line producer Ciaràn Walsh and their German based technical manger Tobias Botzenhardt.
The supply features a full set of black velvet and filled cloth masking drapes including legs, truss and screen borders. Some of the drapes were made from a special velvet material compliant to the German DIN flame retardant requirements. This is standard practice for touring shows to ensure that all the material is covered for whichever standards a specific country might have aligned to. Many Middle and Far Eastern countries have adopted the German standards.
The project also included a number of fibre optic cloths. These were supplied as printed fabric by the Riverdance’s production to the team at Joel’s HQ who wired them into fibre optic elements. The cloths are ‘gridded’ with 1mm and 1.5mm fibre cables. The art is to arrange the fibre optics looking as random and un-regimented as possible to produce quality and authentic starfield effects. The optics are then finished to an industry standard connector which plugs into the selected controller.
Once completed, the fibre cloths were backed with commando cloth –renowned for its toughness and therefore ideal for the touring environment.
The challenge of the project was getting it done in a short timescale and everything ready from production rehearsals in Holland prior to the tour opening in Tokyo. The fibre element in particular was very time consuming, explains Fiona Blackett, who said: “I love to do show builds – they are always exciting and galvanising.”
In addition to supplying all show drapes manufactured for the tour, Joel’s also turned around a series of additional cloths supplied by the production that needed populating with fibre optics at very short notice.
Fiona Blackett says: “I hope that we have established a long term relationship with Riverdance and will be part of the production process on future tours. This is certainly an interesting project that reinforces J&C Joel as a leading theatrical drape manufacturer.“
7th October 2005
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