INDIO, CA – Coachella has always been about stepping into transformative spaces. And over at the iconic Yuma tent it’s clear what that magical zone is all about – an urban EDM nightclub.

Forget that you’re in the middle of a desert, step inside this tent and it’s easy to feel like you entered a hot club in Brooklyn, LA, or Tokyo’s Shibuya district. This effect isn’t due only to the power of the music either, it also springs forth from the space’s immersive club-like lighting design with its intense plays on darkness, brightness, and geometric patterns.

The folks at Forbes understood this. Writing about the Yuma Tent, they called it “a dance fan favorite at Coachella,” and added “it’s an escape from the desert and makes you feel like you walked into the hottest nightclub in California through its captivating light show. Lighting is the source of the exciting energy here.”

Designer, Steve Lieberman of SJ Lighting, who has been lighting the Yuma Tent for years, described the setting this way: “Yuma is not a typical festival design. The approach is more immersive and follows the philosophies of nightclub design. The tent is very long; and this year we added more bays to increase our capacity. This allowed us the opportunity to create long linear details that forced the perspective to create the illusion of an extended ‘tunnel.’ Connecting the lines within the design created continuity throughout the space.”

Complementing the captivating the long, linear displays of light that ran virtually the entire length of the tent were 64 CHAUVET Professional Nexus 7×7 fixtures. Arranged in a vertically oriented column at the center of the backdrop, and in four horizontal strips divided evenly between SR and SL, the warm white fixtures provided an effective counterpoint to the tunnel like lighting overhead. At times it almost seemed as if the tunnel-like lighting was emanating from the panels, creating an embracive effect, while at others, when the panels were turned off, the stage took on a dramatically different appearance.

“We were looking to have a “blinder” effect, and the Nexus gave us that feature with the additional functionality of pixel control,” Lieberman said of the fixtures, which, like the rest of the rig, were supplied by Felix Lighting. “The lensing on the individual nodes is extremely narrow creating very sharp beams cutting through the space.”

Adding the impact of Lieberman’s design was the entire upstage center configuration of fixtures. This added what he calls a “big punch” to the design, which had no video wall. “We put some images onto the wall through our console — the Yuma mascot the disco shark , on the wall,” he said. “Yuma is an “old school” approach to dance music — no video, lighting only. We operate it as a traditional nightclub – dark and minimal, most of the time.”

Not surprisingly, collaboration is essential to brining the Yuma Tent design to its beautiful fruition. “I am grateful to Goldenvoice, who has supported my design endeavors since the inception of this stage,” said Lieberman. “There is also Kobi Danan who is ‘the curator of all things Yuma.’ We work very closely together to achieve our collective vision.”

In the end, that vision has resulted in some memorable looks. Again, just ask the folks at Forbes. They wrote that the lighting at Yuma “adds a thrill boost to every artist’s set, which makes all attendees not want to stop – and isn’t that how it should be?” We couldn’t agree more.