Need help picking out equipment for a dance club/theater.

Hi jimbo and welcome to the forums.

First up is budget and what type of club you are looking for. Older club, dance club, rave, teen club, etc etc. Each type will have a different atmosphere and thus use different fixtures and different types of lighting. For example, in high energy dance and rave clubs, you are going to want strobes and haze most likely. For older type clubs, strobes probably won't go over too well.

That is a large area to cover for sure. If you are planning on hanging lights all the way up at the 50' mark, you are going to need some powerful lights (575w movers and/or beams, high wattage LED fixtures, etc). If you can mount lower, you will be able to use much less powerful fixtures.

Any idea, why not mount a truss system in the room? You can get the lights lower and give the people something to look at vs lights all the way up in the rafters. Again, not sure what type of look or club you are going for, but it can be done in many ways on different budget levels. If you do go that route, make sure you have someone with experience hang and install any truss system. It is something that is very dangerous and can be a huge liability if done wrong.



(Side note for Jim, sorry I have been MIA. Working a Lincoln Financial meeting right now, don't worry, have some pictures. Also just finished one of the best designs of my life last week for a dance show. Can't wait to show you the video on that one . I will watch the video when I come up for air. Back to my corporate hole )

I would agree with Serra Ava in regards to using and installing trusses.

This gives a lot of options. First, of course, you can mount your lights lower. Maybe not a lot, but maybe you can chop 15-20 feet off that 50' ceiling? At a 2000-seat venue I worked with, the ceiling was only like 25 or 30 feet high and we had a drop of maybe 5 feet away from the ceiling. Of course, they were all always using powerful lights.

Another good thing about the trusses is that you can mount the lights where you want them. Plus, nice trusses look cool and high-tech.

You do need to have a rigger come in and establish fly points. You may also want them to install the cabling and safeties as well as sign off on them being safe to a stated limit(which includes the weight of the trussing). DO NOT EXCEED THIS RATING. Chances are they are at a 3:1 ratio or better. In other words, it might be rated for 300 pounds, but can handle 900. Don't risk it, stay under 300 pounds.

Also, higher mounting means harder maintenance. How are you going to get up there? Bulbs need chaning, fluids need replacing, everything needs cleaning. 50 feet is way the hell up there. Not to say I'm totally afraid of heights, but I for one ain't climbing a latter that high. 25-feet max for me.

Other options include mounting trussing and/or fixtures to walls, but that doesn't look as nice. It tends to look cheap. It also cuts your options as you WILL want something over the floor.

Trussing can be expensive. I would recommend square trussing. Global Truss makes some really nice stuff. Maybe a large circle is all you need, suspended from your ceiling, maybe with some cross-beams in it? I am personally not a big fan of triangle trussing. I-beam is good for mobile and temporary at best, I would NOT use it for a permanent install.

Thanks for the advice. Who would I need to contact to install the truss'?
There aren't any night clubs within an hour drive so there aren't any contractors in the area that specialize in night club design. Id probably have to get someone to drive down from Rochester or NYC.

You will need an engineer or rigger. Rigger might be harder to come by in the area, so I would look for an engineer. You would have to talk to one anyway to get load tolerances and what not before you have a truss anyway. Rigger can only safely install, not tell you what the ceiling can safely hold. A good rigger, however, will be able to find safe points to rig from and estimate load bearings.

Whatever you do, make sure it get a contract that says the are liable for any and all damages, injuries, and/or deaths for any false information, improper installation, etc. Also getting in a certified writing as to what they say is safe and the points/ceiling can hold, this way you are covered.

Almost the riggers I know are also engineers, but the advise is still valid.

I'm not going to learn rigging unless I'm going to learn the engineering. I don't want to be left in a bad situation. But, in the touring world, typically speaking, the rigging points have already been engineered and all that needs to happen is some facilities manager or supervisor to point out what rigging points are rated for what.

In the poster's case, he's lucky in the fact that he won't have to deal with shows coming in and out. Still, it's like Serra Ava said, put it in writing.

Flying gear above people's heads always presents an inherent danger of something failing and falling. It's a fact of life. No doubt your insurance premiums will also scoot up a bit as well because of additional potential liability.

Consider this:
OK, so you say there's nobody within an hour's drive. OK, not a big deal, that isn't anything terribly bad. You're basically looking at what should be a one-off project. There will be a site inspectial and they'll probably want to go over the blueprints of the building and take photos. Let's just hope the things are built to the blueprints because I know I've seen stuff where corners were cut all over the place(my house is an example of that, like no insulation in the back wal and all sorts of shoddy work) There may be a few more visits to confirm things. The last visit should be the installation of the trussing.

Now that things are in place, have you decided how you're going to do your routine maintenance as well as putting the lights in place?