The Brigham Young University (BYU) Ballroom Dance Company is one of BYU’s touring dance groups. The touring technical team for the group consists of the group’s technical director, the stage manager, audio engineer, lighting technician, and two stage technicians.
The group tours nationally with an L’Acoustics PA system, a Yamaha QL1, and one Shure ULXD rack. Playback for the group is provided from Qlab, which is patched into the system via Dante.
My involvement with the group was as their audio engineer from September 2020 to May 2021.
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as well as government and university policies, during my time with the group we were unable to participate in a traditional tour, but we were given some unique opportunities to perform.
We were able to participate in the weekly DanceLive program presented by the BYU Department of Dance. This program was a weekly hour long live-streamed performance which, when safe, was also presented to a limited studio audience.
This opportunity presented a unique challenge initially to me and the audio engineers working with the other participating groups, we were not only in charge of mixing for the in house audience and performers, but we were tasked with mixing for our virtual livestream audience simultaneously.
The Ballroom Dance Company’s yearly on campus performance “BYU Ballroom Dance in Concert” was also presented in a live streamed format, with audio being mixed for a limited in house audience and a virtual audience simultaneously.
The BYU Ballroom Dance Company was offered another opportunity to perform in April of 2021 where they participated in a virtual world tour presented by BYU’s Performance Arts Management. This “world tour” was structured similarly to the DanceLive livestreams, with a 50-minute live streamed performance. The one difference in the virtual tours was that the audio engineers were mixing only for the livestream, and not for an in-house audience.