EMEA & APAC AWARDS • THE AMERICAS AWARDS
Located in the heart of Cancún’s ‘hotel zone’, The City opened in 2004 and is now well-established as one of the resort’s most popular nightclubs. Standing out amongst the area’s myriad of bars and clubs, The City is a vast multi-level venue with a large capacity of 7,000. The club’s operator, Grupo AntroMex, considers an impressive lightshow to be essential in maintaining its position as one of the region’s leading clubs and recently undertook a full upgrade of its lighting technology. The brief was to create unadulterated ‘wow factor’ and a show that would fill the club’s cavernous main space with piercing beams, energetic movement and vibrant colour.
The lightshow at the The City is built around a vast truss structure which is described by the club’s Production Director, Alejandro Vázquez, as a ‘spider’, because it has eight legs that extend out from a central pair of concentric circles. The whole thing is able to lower down on electronic hoists like a spider descending on its web.
Having evaluated a variety of options, ADJ’s Vizi Beam 5RX was selected by Grupo AntroMex for the club. 90 of the fixtures were installed in the roof, predominantly on the ‘spider’ rig, with an additional 40 units positioned on static truss structures that run along the sides of the venue and around the stage. Powered by the Philips® Platinum 5R 189W lamp, which offers output comparable to a standard 575W discharge lamp, the fixture generates an intense beam with a 5-degree angle which is ideal for generating incredible mid-air effects when deployed in such large quantities.
Eight Vizi Beam 5RXs are rigged to the central circular truss, with an additional 16 units spaced out around the outer circle. This creates a focal point in the center of the huge space, directly above the main dancefloor, and allows for impressive circular sweeping movements. In addition, five more fixtures are hung from each of the eight ‘leg’ trusses, and even more units are rigged to separate triangular truss structures in each corner of the ceiling. This results in a roof full of beams projecting from every angle which, when combined with the additional fixtures down the side of the room and around the stage, makes for a truly mesmerizing lightshow.
The new lighting system fills the vast club with piercing beams of richly-saturated colour and generates a wide variety of awe-inspiring effects. It has allowed the venue to cement it’s position as one of the leading nightclubs in the area, and continue to attract capacity crowds week in, week out.
Due to Mexico’s tropical climate, the club has previously experienced problems with fixtures failing quickly due to the high humidity and so the reliability of the Vizi Beam 5RX was equally important to Grupo AntroMex as its output. “It has a very powerful beam and has also worked very well despite the humidity,” Alejandro Vázquez explains. “Here in Cancún, we have severe humidity and that can be a big problem, but the ADJ gear is very good. Its quality control is high and the fixtures are doing well enduring the most adverse operating conditions on the market. We’ve made comparison tests with several other brands and ADJ has proven to be the best option for this type of climate, aside of the great effects and the product quality. To maintain this monstrosity of a lighting rig is a logistical challenge in the area of service, but we receive excellent support from ADJ Mexico and have experienced absolutely no problems with the inventory.”
The new lighting system at The City is truly awe inspiring, deploying a vast quantity of moving head fixtures across an imposing automated truss structure to create a truly world-class light show.
