Housing Goes Dancing

Saville Audio Visual provided the AV facilities for a unique charity event staged by the Chartered Institute of Housing North East at Ramside Hall Hotel in Durham, involving two of the stars from Strictly Come Dancing.

Featuring a spectacular display of ballroom dancing by Anton Du Beke and Erin Boag, ‘Housing Goes Dancing’ was compered by BBC TV presenter Jeff Brown and thanks to the generosity of those lucky enough to obtain tickets, over £2000 was raised on the evening for three north east cancer charities.

Saville conference manager Sara McKenzie said: “We were delighted to be involved, not just to help support the local charities, but I knew that our technical crew would enjoy the challenge of creating a lighting display that would be different to the normal type of events we produce. With a little research from the BBC website we created a lighting programme to deliver a number of different lighting options, designed to really wow the audience.”

“From the outset, the challenge of Anton and Erin’s technical requirements was quite clearly going to revolve around the type of dance floor that would be needed. Because of the footwork involved in their show and the speed they move, they insist on a very large floor that has no joins,” Sara added.

Contractor/developer supplied a custom-made floor, built on top of the existing hotel floor. Saville then arranged for a team of experienced vinyl appliers to cover it with a specialised high gloss dance floor material. The white glossy finish provided a perfect area for projecting the client’s logo and creating a different lighting effect for every dance that Anton and Erin performed, as well as for the spectacular disco rig which rounded off the night.

The AV facilities included projectors and screens to show the charity video, a sound system for the presentation, dancing show and disco, plus a large truss frame lighting rig to illuminate dance floor area, complete with the obligatory Mirror Ball! (no ‘Strictly’ style event should be without one!)

CIH Regional Event Manager, Gavin Brown said: “On behalf of the Regional Committee of the Chartered Institute of Housing in the North East I would like to express my thanks and gratitude to Saville for the excellent service they delivered for us at the Housing Goes Dancing event.

We have worked with them for a number of years now and have found Sara and her team to be more than willing to help us to deliver exceptional events throughout our calendar. In particular their attention to detail is exceptional and their ideas are fantastic – and always make our events better than we initially envisage them to be. They make the process simple and effortless for me.”

Tags: FHM North East, Saville Audio Visual

Category: Corporate Events