Bangkok rooftops: what height imposes on a performance

Height is never a neutral backdrop

Several dozen metres above the ground, the air no longer behaves as it does below. The wind there is steadier, stronger, and it accelerates as it rounds the corners of the building. A corner of terrace that is perfectly calm at six in the evening can become unusable two hours later, without anything having changed in the sky.

This fact governs the choice of form before the choreography is even considered. Veils, long skirts, floating fabrics, feathers, petals and any naked flame become difficult to control. Conversely, movement held close to the body, structured costumes and weighted props cope very well with height.

The only information worth having comes from the venue itself, taken at the exact hour of your performance and not in the middle of the day. Ask the terrace manager which acts they have seen work there, and which they have seen fail: their answer will teach you more than a site visit at noon.

Safety at height: the perimeter and what falls

The first rule of a rooftop stage comes down to one sentence: nothing must be able to pass over the railing. A dropped prop, a scarf carried off by the wind, a detached piece of costume do not land on the terrace but in the street, several floors below. That alone rules out certain acts from the start, whatever the quality of the artist.

The second rule concerns distance. The perimeter is not measured by the dancer’s silhouette but by the real amplitude of their movement and of their props in rotation, plus a clear margin to the edge. A missed turn can be recovered on an indoor stage; it cannot be recovered against a railing.

Then comes the question of rigging points. An aerial structure is never improvised, and least of all on a roof, where the available points often belong to the building’s technical frame. That approval falls to the venue or to a rigging professional, in writing, with a stated and verified load — never to the artist, never to the client.

• —A dance area set clearly back from the railing, marked out on the floor and respected by the waiting staff.
• —Weighted or secured props, and nothing light left near the edge.
• —A dedicated safety person, who does not dance and has no other task during the act.
• —A rigging point approved in writing by the venue if an aerial form is under consideration.

Sound in the open air

In the open air, there are no longer any walls to send the sound back. What carried naturally in a reception hall is diluted at once, and the first assumption is a lack of power. That is rarely the case: what is missing is sources. Several small speakers distributed around the listening area serve an evening better than a single system pushed too hard, which drowns conversation without ever giving the music any presence.

Height adds a constraint you do not expect: sound travels. An open terrace broadcasts towards the neighbouring buildings, and the practice is that establishments at altitude apply cut-off times or volume limits of their own. This point is put to the venue early, and it shapes the end of your evening far more than you would imagine.

Finally, have the music file played on the system actually installed, at the hour of the performance and not in the afternoon. The background noise of a rooftop in the early evening bears no relation to that of an empty terrace: the city below, the ventilation plant and a hundred conversations form a permanent bed of sound with which the music has to work.

Going up, coming down, falling back

Everything that performs on a terrace is brought up there by a lift. It is the most concrete constraint and the most often forgotten: the size of the car decides what can perform at your event. A costume trunk, a stage rostrum, an aerial apparatus or a lighting stand do not fold. Ask for the usable dimensions of the service lift, its access hours and whether a slot has to be booked: in many towers, it is shared with catering and maintenance.

The second point is the dressing rooms. On a rooftop, space is scarce and commercially valuable: the changing room is frequently one or several floors below. An artist in full costume does not cross a bar, a service corridor and a public lift without the costume and the effect suffering for it. Settle that route in advance, or obtain an enclosed space on the same floor.

Then there is the rain. A downpour in the wet season arrives quickly and passes quickly, but a wet terrace stays slippery long afterwards. The fallback plan is not improvised on the night: it comes down to three elements — where you fall back to, who decides, and at what time the decision is taken. Write them down before signing, and tell the artists which scenario has been chosen: a choreography set for twenty metres of terrace does not transpose unchanged into an indoor lounge.