Sirkus Finlandia keeps the show on the road with Ayrton

Finland’s biggest touring circus, Sirkus Finlandia, completed a successful tour of the country late last year with a lighting rig composed almost entirely of Ayrton fixtures. The Ayrton products were supplied and supported by Ayrton’s exclusive distributor for Finland, Oy Lafoy Ltd of Helsinki.

Established in 1976, Sirkus Finlandia is a family run business with an international reputation. Before the coronavirus pandemic hit, Sirkus Finlandia had planned a 250-date tour across 115 cities from April to November, with audience capacities of 1600. The pandemic may have delayed its plans but it certainly didn’t stop them. Determined to keep the show on the road, the company still managed to bring its colourful, uplifting show to the Finnish people over the summer, performing 108 shows in 23 cities to reduced audiences from the beginning of June until the start of November – a major achievement in these difficult times.

Sirkus Finlandia’s lighting designer, Eero Auvinen, incorporated Ayrton Perseo IP65-rated fixtures into his design for the first time this year – a design which already used 6 Ayrton NandoBeam S3 wash lights and 8 Ayrton MagicDot-R. These were rigged over the main ring on trusses suspended from the Big Top’s supporting structures and used pre-show to light the audience and create eye-catching visuals. Throughout the show, the NandoBeam S3 fixtures were used as front lighting and the MagicDots and Perseo units used to create an array of wonderful effects, textures and colours to provide a magical ambience for the huge variety of acts.

Auvinen has chosen to use Ayrton lighting fixtures on Sirkus Finlandia tours for several years: “We started with MagicDots when we were in need of something light and small for the band stand,” he explains. “Oy Lafoy, which has supplied and supported our lighting equipment on tour for more than 10 years, recommended the MagicDots. Oy Lafoy are a very reliable company and we trust their opinion, so we were happy to try their suggestion. We were very impressed with the MagicDots, so the next year we replaced our front lights with NandoBeam S3s. For 2020, we added Perseo and the results are amazing. This is the first year I have been able to fully utilize gobo projections thanks to Perseo’s good optics and punch. Now we have seen how it performs under show conditions, we are well on our way to making our lighting rig Ayrton-only.”

Auvinen and his team (technical designer, Tuomo Körkkö and AV Technician, Tero Juopperi) chose Perseo not only because of its incredible design capacity and feature set, but because it is an IP65 rated, dust-proof fixture. “A Circus is a very demanding environment for lighting fixtures, especially with the horses running around the ring – the amount of dust they create is incredible,” Auvinen says. “The cleaning and service process for our equipment is very time-consuming, and it the ultimate reliability test for any fixture. We needed fixtures that can take this, along with 100+ load-ins each season, and occasional water leaks from the roof of the Big Top. Perseo was able to handle all of this easily and we have saved a lot in maintenance time.

“But what makes the Ayrton fixtures stand out most is their reliability in the harshest of conditions. We can trust completely that the rig will be fully operational in every city we visit!”

Text: Julie Harper
Photos: © Courtesy of Sirkus Finlandia.