Summit Steel supplied rigging and associated support services for the Cirque du Soleil production Alegria at the Royal Albert Hall in London. This is the sixth Cirque production that Summit has put into the venue.
The 2006 project involved the preparation of 104 points of rigging, for which Summit has supplied 40 of their own Lodestar motors in addition to using the house hoists.
Summit also designed a completely new rigging infrastructure, involving the installation of nearly 400m of Summit’s James Thomas Supertruss. This was needed for Cirque to produce their daring, highly acrobatic sequences–normally staged in their own purpose-built big top.
A week before the Christmas holiday, a team of four Summit riggers installed and proof tested anchor points, and repositioned house hoists in order to facilitate an efficient load-in, which commenced the day after Christmas, Boxing Day.
Summit’s Chris Walker led a team of 11 riggers working both day and night shifts over a five-day period between Christmas and New Year, to ensure the show was ready for its first rehearsal on December 31, 2005.
Walker worked closely with Cirque’s rigging project manager Denis Horth, their special projects technical director, Marc-André Leclerc, and with RAH technical show managers Adrian Bray and Simon Frost.