Lighting Designer Adrian Tan Bathes Singapore Ballet’s Classical Masterpiece in Colour-rich Calm with Robe ESPRITES

Singapore’s Esplanade Theatres by the Bay witnessed a luminous revival of Swan Lake by the Singapore Ballet, elegantly lit by renowned designer Adrian Tan of The Light Project using 32 units of ROBE’s ESPRITE moving lights. With 16 ESPRITE Profiles and 16 ESPRITE Fresnels at his command—28 of which were part of a recent house rig upgrade—Tan added finesse with four additional units sourced via Robe’s Asia Pacific office in Singapore.

This marked the third time the iconic production was re-lit for Esplanade’s stage, the second to feature accompaniment from the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra, but crucially, the first with ESPRITES as the production’s primary lighting workhorses. Known for his sensitivity to sonic interference, especially in opera environments, Tan was immediately taken by the ESPRITE’s whisper-quiet operation—an essential for environments where even the hum of a fan can ruin a performance’s ambience.

Positioned entirely above the stage at a trim height of 10 metres, the ESPRITES were tasked with delivering consistent, nuanced top washes. Tan praised the output as “amazing,” never needing to push them to full intensity. The goal was to emulate a traditional tungsten aesthetic—one that required fixtures to work subtly yet constantly, without drawing attention to themselves. “They were never seen to move,” he noted, “but they worked hard throughout.”

Tan’s exacting standards for colour rendition were tested—and exceeded—by the ESPRITES. As someone who considers warm whites and refined pastels crucial for the classical genre, he found that the ESPRITE’s 3000K tones beautifully captured the warm, golden glow he was after without needing excessive colour mixing. For the lake scenes, he effortlessly arrived at a “very satisfactory” 5600K with the right nuance and texture; as he explained that until this experience with ESPRITES, the warm tones of any LED fixtures were “never warm enough”.

By his own admission, Adrian is “a stickler” for hyper-sensitive linear dimming and elegant refined pastels, cool steels and decent warm whites, “Most manufacturers can do a saturated blue or a red, but when it comes to pastels, colour mixing, especially using an LED source, it is a whole new art form.”

He noted that creating the beautiful and intricate gobo scenes required for this production was “substantially faster” using ESPRITES and moving lights than it had been previously, and that you had the additional benefit of being able to repurpose those same fixtures that were instrumental in building the gobo scenes, for something completely different just moments later as the story unfolded.

At the same time, Tan, who is a mainstay at Singapore’s Gardens by The Bay which features installed architectural products from Robe’s architectural brand, Anolis; also expressed his approval of Robe’s T1 range – particularly its fantastic the colour temperatures – with which he was already familiar, “Again, the dimming and CTO features are extremely good for an LED source.” He informs that he first used Robe products back in the early days with the ColorSpot E AT series, and even back then noticed the “outstanding” CMY colour mixing.

“The kit is reliable, well designed and engineered and you know what you are going to get,” he commented; informing that he has also recently used more of the new Robe fixtures at Esplanade Theatres by The Bay including PAINTES in the Black Box space, and FOOTSIE2s and T32 Cycs when lighting a hybrid / contemporary dance piece. These were all part of the same lighting upgrade featuring a total of 170 Robe products among other lights.