Photos : Camilla Alibrandi

Multi award winning Italian singer / songwriter and music producer Laura Pausini started her 2016 world touring campaign in support of her new ‘Simili’ studio album with a brand new lighting design created by Alain Corthout and Ignace D’Haese from Belgian based creative visual design practice, Arf & Yes.

This includes 128 x Robe Pointes and 109 x BMFL WashBeams which are right at the centre of a complex and eye-catching rig.

The tour kicked off with 5 large stadium dates – all completely sold out – in Italy for which the set and video was designed by Igor Ronchese from Tekset based in Paderno Dugnano. It now continues in the U.S. where Pausini has a massive following especially amongst the Hispanic population, and then Latin America where she is also hugely popular. At the 27th Lo Nuestro Awards in 2015 she stated that although being Italian, “half of my heart beats Latino”.

It was the Latino connection that also brought her into contact with Alain, who has sprinkled his lighting flair and imagination on the live shows for a number of high profile Latin music stars including Juanes, Alejandro Fernandez, Chayanne and many more.

Alain and Ignace were asked to pitch for the tour. Pausini and her management loved their proposal and they won the job, specifying the Pointes and BMFLs amongst other fixtures.

The Pointes are rigged on eight vertical ladders and four trussing towers upstage – 16 Pointes per ladder and 32 Pointes per tower. They are used for epic wide-stage looks and retina-burning sweeps and effects across the performance area and out into the audience.

Eighty-five BMFL WashBeams are positioned on 5 ‘V’-shaped trusses used as backlight, with 24 used as filler and key lighting for the band.

These fixtures were specified ‘Because you can never go wrong with Pointes or BMFLs” states Alain.

He likes the intense brightness of the BMFLs, plus the frost filter and the speed of all the parameters.

A keen Pointe user for the last three years since the fixture was launched, these are his go-to well-priced lightweight fixtures available almost everywhere, which he uses repeatedly in spot and beam modes and also as follow spots!

Alain is out on the road himself with Laura Pausini. It’s an effervescent, lively and very up-tempo show, lots of fun and drama needing plenty of fast moving visuals to keep pace with the performance.

“It’s great to hit every musical accent on the show with a lighting one and these are numerous!”

Pausini herself takes a keen interest in the show presentation. She spends a lot of time with Alain and looks into the details of all the programming, “She really does want to see every single cue,” he relates.

Lighting equipment was supplied in Italy by Agora. The vendor in the U.S. is Clearwing and for the 7 shows in Mexico it will be Audio Systems del Norte from Monterrey.

Alain, a lighting professional for the last 20 years, is known for his lateral thinking and off-beat approach to lighting and visual design – a feature of the creative tour de force that is Ghent based Arf & Yes. He has been using Robe products regularly in his work for the last 4 years.

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