The 52nd Grammy Awards were held on 31st January at the Los Angeles Staples Center. The audience was the largest it’s been in six years, with approximately 25.8 million viewers tuning in ‐ that’s nearly 9 million more than the Golden Globes and 12 million more than the Emmys this year.
The popularity of this year’s production was put down in part to the performance‐orientated programme, with live crooning from modern‐day divas including Beyoncé, Fergie and Pink. Pink is one of the few singer‐songwriters in the contemporary entertainment world who takes on challenging, performer‐flying routines herself, creating her very own captivating fusion of stage arts.
Despite not winning a Grammy herself this year, it’s generally agreed (and not just by her fans), that Pink stole the show, with a moving rendition of ‘Glitter in the Air’ that brought the crowd to their feet. Never missing a beat, Pink delivered the song from her Funhouse album with typical aplomb in conjunction with a beautifully‐choreographed and elegant trapeze act. Leaving little to the imagination in a cat suit of white ribbon and flesh coloured spandex, Pink slipped into a white silk sling that lifted her up above the stage where she remained airborne throughout the song with three gold‐clad silk performers accompanying her acrobatic feats. The American‐born star kept her flawless composure as the rigging system dipped her into a pool and lifted her out in a series of spins and a spray of water.
Aerial Rigging Techniques once again chose to use a Stage Technologies AU:tour system and 3 BigTow winches, controlled with an Acrobat desk, to transport Pink to these higher heights at the Grammys. Aerial Rigging Techniques and Stage Technologies provided rigging expertise and superior rental equipment for Pink’s high‐octane ‘Funhouse’ tour, which started out in the Netherlands last year, rocked Australia, rolled around the US and has boomeranged back to sell‐out shows for her fans in Europe into 2010. The stage engineering specialists also helped Pink to add an extra dimension to her rendition of the Top 20 hit ‘Sober’ at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, where she was nominated for Best Female Video.
Richard Kent of ART has plenty of experience working on challenging sets and with highprofile celebrities. ‘Providing answers to demanding design briefs in this area is something that as a company we thrive on,’ he said. ‘Being able to supply a flexible, reliable and tourable set of control and rigging equipment was essential for us to guarantee a polished end product for Pink. Stage Technologies more than met our brief allowing us to give the artist the confidence to achieve her ambitious performance criteria.’
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