Eclipse Noitada

The touristic and cultural city of Portimão organises NOITADA every year, a multi-day cultural festival across the whole city with various stages, live bands, walking acts and national and international light installations. For their second edition they were looking for a spectacular addition to their programme. Since then we have become a regular part of the festival.

Last summer we returned for the second year running, this time with a new creation: Osmose, the Voice of Flames, a show by Mandalights in collaboration with Lunar Shows, with fire taking centre stage. Once again we delivered eight fire spectacles, spread over two days with five artists. This time for twice as many visitors: no fewer than 400,000 people. What started as a first booking has grown into a recurring partnership with the city of Portimão.

The organisation, run by New Sheet Entertainment, was particularly interested in a fire show for the first edition. Because international fire shows bring their own challenges and Portugal treats fire very seriously, we carried out thorough research into fuels, examined various locations for visibility and safety, and discussed alternatives such as a live light show with timecoded projection mapping.

In the end the enthusiasm outweighed the obstacles. We shipped our entire team and all our fire materials to Portugal and partnered with a local light and sound company to programme our show to timecode. With a Portuguese special-effects company we set up an impressive number of flame throwers, complemented by pyrotechnic effects. In close collaboration with the city of Portimão and the fire brigade, we delivered a unique and exceptionally powerful performance of our signature fire show Eclipse.

One visitor summed it up nicely: he came to watch the show four times on the same evening because he found it so spectacular.