Many people ask me what is the minimum number of suits they need for their first LED show. Here are some pieces of advice for you.
So, first of all, it depends on what you focus on and what kind of LED suits technology you want to use. Why? Because of the size of your dance crew and of course the price.
In 2021 LED groups are still using these technologies:
- El wire
- LED analog
- LED digital
- Fiber optic cable
LED robots
We will start with the smallest number of dancers used for one show. LED robots use digital costumes most of the time, with a lot of digital strips. They don´t dance but perform walking acts with extended legs and that’s the reason why they can have so many pixels on them. They don´t need to move freely because they are just walking and taking pictures with guests. Often, they have something extra on the suit as lasers, CO gun or in some cases fire. They have just 1 or 2 costumes because they are very expensive and also the maintenance is difficult.
Tron dancers with digital / pixel strips
We can see a few LED groups that are using LED digital strips for their dancing shows. Usually, they dance from 3 dancers to 5 dancers. You can program each pixel of the suits like on LED robots but they have many fewer pixels and no extended legs. Of course, there is bigger freedom of movement but as you can see in most of the shows they don´t dance a lot and the bigger part of the show are the effects created on the suits. These suits are harder to program and to be honest market doesn´t offer a good software solution for that. I have seen some LED groups that invested in these suits and didn´t use them for shows because of complicated programming and high maintenance costs. We are very glad that we made the first digital controllers that are very user-friendly for programming and creating live shows.
Tron dancers with analog strips or fiber optic cable
This technology is used by the majority of LED gropes in the world. There are many reasons behind it. First of all, programming is quite easy, really depends on your software but you can manage it in few hours. The second reason is the suits are quite reliable and maintenance is not very difficult neither expensive compared to digital/pixel technology. Also, the price for these suits is just half or even more compared to digital suits. This is why you can find bigger pools of LED groups using this technology, usually from 5 until 10 dancers but there are some unique groups like ours that can do the show even with 60 dancers but it is not common at all. We can do it because we are making the suits in the house with all software. We can do it with both, fiber optic cable or analog LED strips. I would say fiber optic is even easier for maintenance because of LED diodes but you can have a bigger problem with washing suits or clothes but it really depends on your particular design and material you use. In general, fiber optic can be installed on clothes from normal fabric but analog suits are usually installed on plastic parts (that´s the reason why you don´t have a problem with washing).
I hope I helped you out with deciding about what kind and amount of LED suits you want to get. In case you are still not sure, do not hesitate to text me here and I will be happy to help you.