A Collage of Dance, Songs and Satirical Vignettes, Captured on Stage by Shure MXA910

Customer Profile

A desperate mermaid, women galloping in slow motion and Spanish rhythms by award-winning Israeli choreographer Roy Assaf.

Assaf is a master of combining the outlandish with the serious, and in his first work for Danish Dance Theatre, we meet several wacky characters in a collage of satirical vignettes, drawn from the artists wish to create the ultimate and perfect show, which is not an easy task. 

Assaf describes dance as a ’filter’ to his own internal world. His approach to his choreographic practice is intuitive. The work is created as an exchange between the dancers and himself. 

This method is built on mutual trust between the dancers and the choreographer and is crucial to the exchange of creative ideas.

Solution

With the entire show captured almost exclusively with a Shure MXA910 Ceiling Array Microphone (except for a couple of announcements, where a Shure UR2 wireless transmitter is used) sound designer Mikkel Larsen describes how the MXA910 “seems to focus the sound compared to both Shotgun mics and floor mics.” 

Larsen has used the MXA910 for other dance acts and is very pleased with the performance.

Advantages

“For me, it seems to ‘zoom’ in on the performers more than traditional microphone types, and at the same time, it also enhances the sound of movement, in a way which suits this performance much better than a body-worn mic would do,” explains Larsen.

Two Lions and a Castle is a hybrid of dancing and singing, with the MXA910 doing a superb job of capturing both the human voice and the natural sounds that emanate from moving about on the stage. 

These combined sounds are then amplified over the house PA system, adding to the total experience of the show.

Photo Credit: Kasper Bregenborg, Dansk Danseteater and Raphael Frisenvænge Solholm.