NASHVILLE — Motown is a good distance from Music City (533 miles, to be exact), but inspiration has a way of transcending geographical space. It was on a trip back home to Detroit for the holiday’s that Alexandra Kay’s lighting designer, Corbin Alvae saw a stylized heart in an advertisement. And like an arrow from Cupid’s quiver, it struck him with a vision of the perfect set piece for his red hot client’s current 30-city “Cupid’s A Cowgirl” tour.

“The concept for this design really came when AK talked about this being the start of a new phase of her career,” said Alvae. “W called it the ‘Lover Girl Era. So, when I was designing this with her and her management, I really wanted something to stand out as a good center prop to bring this show together. One day visiting home in Michigan for the holidays, I drove by a massive red heart, and it just hit me with a lot of inspiration to tie together not only the tour’s name, Cupid’s A Cowgirl, but also the love aspect that a heart can bring and the joy of what being loved feels like.”

Drawing up his idea in previz, Alvae took two curved aluminum pipes with extensions, and mounted them to a couple heavy duty base plates to bring his vision to life but it was anything but simple.

“We went through two or three different versions until the final fabrication that’s seen on this tour stuck,” he said. “Considering that some of the rooms we’re playing have trim height restrictions, along with stage restrictions, we had to make sure it fit every venue. At the same time, the heart had to be big enough to have an impact.”

Helping to ensure that Cupid’s heart, along with the rest of the set has the desired “big impact,” is a collection of CHAUVET Professional COLORado fixtures supplied by Bandit Lites. Most prominent in this group are 12 PXL Curve 12 RGBW motorized battens, which are positioned throughout the rig. Drawing on the color rendering power of this fixture and its 12 independently controlled moving heads, Alvae relies on it to create a series of engaging, smoothly flowing looks.

“The PXL Curve 12’s are a go to fixture for us on this tour,” he said. “I have them scattered everywhere — six hang out downstage to give some really fun looks for fans, whereas the others are mid stage by the risers, and also are rigged inside of eight-foot truss.”

The remaining COLORado fixtures (PXL Bar 8 motorized battens and RGBAW pixel mappable Solo Battens) are also well represented in the rig and are used to create vivid, color combinations and patterns.

Explaining his choice of fixtures, Alvae said, “the goal was to make this show look as sassy and fun as possible. When choosing the fixtures for this show, I really wanted some that had a lot of dynamics to them and the ability to give us really clean and fun looks. But also, I wanted fixtures that would give me the option to add moody looks during the slower, heartfelt songs in the set.”

The breadth of possibilities of Alvae’s rig provided him with the ideal tool to complement Alexandra Kay’s vocals, which People Magazine described as “angelic, yet soaring.” Creating a lighting design that supported that voice in addition to capturing this chart-topping star’s sassy, fun-loving and totally engaging stage persona, was no easy task. It took a lot of collaboration, dedication, serious creative chops…. and a little bit of inspiration that struck out of nowhere on a drive home in Detroit.