ETC Prodigy Stage Machinery upgrades Musikhuset Aarhus in Denmark

The Rytmisk Sal of Musikhuset Aarhus, the largest music house in the Nordic region, has upgraded its stage machinery system with ETC’s Prodigy P2 hoist and QuickTouch+ 12 controller.

The popular culture and events house in Denmark draws over a million visitors each year for concerts, musicals, theatre shows, opera and much more. The building’s lighting and technical teams had been looking to renovate the rigging system in the Rytmisk Sal (or rhythmic hall), also known as the ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll hall’ in the music house.

Head of lighting at Musikhuset Aarhus, Ole Nielsen, came across ETC’s range of upper stage machinery products during a visit to the renowned ETC factory in Middleton, USA and was keen to find out more. He recommended the equipment to Head of production, Jonas Knive which lead to Atendi, the Danish distributor of ETC, being contacted to supply the equipment.

8 Prodigy P2 hoist systems were selected to upgrade the current system. “With the quantity of shows and productions held at the Musikhuset Aarhus, the challenge was fitting the installation into the busy schedule of the event house,” comments Jonas. There was just one time slot available, and the project was installed just three weeks after the quote request. The short turnaround was so fast it required delivering and converting the Prodigy P2 hoists held in European stock from their compression tube mounting arrangement into the variant that can be mounted vertically and suspended on the main beams.

“This is a perfect example of how Prodigy hoists adapt to suit any venue,” says ETC European Rigging Sales Manager, Enrico Nobile, “the P2 motorized winch unit can be used with compression tube to remove lateral loads on a building structure, to provide easy and free drop pulleys placement or without compression tube installed vertically or horizontally (above or below the grid) however the installation requires it.” The load feedback and the position control are supplied as a standard, together with all the safety features including: slack line detection, overload and underload, overcurrent protection, hard limits (2+2), load profiling and error log file to have a constant and complete hoist report.  

QuickTouch+ 12 control station offers users complete system control in an affordable and user-friendly package; the LCD screen offers a simple and quick view of all main parameters coming from the hoist system.

Jonas Knive comments: ‘Here at Musikhuset Aarhus we host over 1500 events a year across our 10 stages and 6 halls, which means time is always short. The simplicity of the ETC Prodigy system makes it much easier for us to accommodate the wishes of the visiting productions and dedicate more time to their needs.”