For several years the lighting department has been investing in Robe moving lights and earlier in the year Robe’s new SPOTE moving light became the latest fixtures to be added to their growing inventory.

While the pandemic has been a difficult time, with all the venues closed to the public, Cankarjev dom has managed to maintain a small income via streaming and staging hybrid and socially distanced business events, and regular staff, crew and technicians have been able to take advantage of a flexible furloughing scheme.

Despite the massive challenges faced over the last year, Cankarjev dom proceeded with the investment in eight SPOTE fixtures, which have joined around 150 other Robe luminaires that they already own.

These new SPOTEs are designated exclusively for the ‘Klub’ area, a second-floor multipurpose function room that includes a roof terrace with excellent views over the city.

“We needed a small powerful LED fixture,” explained head of lighting Gregor Plantan, and the compact body SPOTE which outputs 2,700 lumens of quality white light utilizing Robe’s TE™ 70W White LED engine from the ground-breaking TRANSFERABLE ENGINE (TE) range technology was a perfect candidate.

Buying into the TE technology will also help maintain light quality and consistency across their Robe inventory going forward.

The Klub room has a low ceiling height so a fixture that could work for rear lighting effects was essential. After initially considering the LEDBeam 150, they concluded a wash-beam fixture was not specifically what was needed, and then Robe launched the SPOTE earlier in the year, which ticked all the boxes!

The SPOTE was designed with exactly this type of application in mind.

Its 16-degree fixed-beam lens has remote control focus and can be changed to the optional 24-degree lens for a shorter throw and low ceiling scenarios. There is an excellent range of effects including a colour wheel with 13 dichroic filters; a gobo wheel with 9 fully indexable, rotating, replaceable gobos; an 8-facet bi-directional rotating prism and a 5-degree frost for creating super-smooth washes.

The Klub room is used extensively for small concerts, recitals and performances, spoken word events, book launches, corporate presentations, lunches, etc. and in fact it was the third most popular Cankarjev dom space - before Covid - after the Gallus Hall and the Linhart Hall.

The first real gig for the SPOTEs as part of the Klub’s house lighting rig was during the recent 2021 Ljubljana Festival, when the space was used for book readings with musical accompaniment. Cankarjev dom generally was also the festival’s main stage ‘backup plan’ if that could not run due to inclement weather!

Grega loves the new fixtures. “They are certainly bright enough and the small size, light weight and handleability is fantastic,” he commented, adding “the simplicity of this fixture is an important part of its beauty!”

Cankarjev dom’s various lighting rigs all make use of Robe luminaires. Venue wide there’s quite a selection of fixtures including BMFLs, Spiiders, Viva CMYs, LEDBeam 100s, LEDWash 600s, CycFX 8s and 600 E Spots. Even some quality antique’s like ColorSpot 575 XTs, which were the first Robe products in the house around 15 years ago, and are still going and used occasionally, along with 50 x ColorMix 250s initially purchased to wash the rear curtains for a TV show.

In a normal year, Cankarjev dom produces and stages nearly 1,100 cultural events, plus over 200 private events, conferences, etc. Now, all are focused and looking forward to getting back to work and some kind of normalcy. While nothing is completely concrete right now, the venues already have bookings through 2024!

Photo Credit: Louise Stickland