Houston Ballet’s Venetian Contour Curtain, Winches, and Open Platform Automation System

When Curtains Become Choreography: Houston Ballet’s Raymonda 

 

 

When Houston Ballet developed Stanton Welch’s world premiere of Raymonda, the scenic design called for a grand and elegant Venetian Contour curtain that required precise, repeatable control to achieve a highly choreographed effect. The design featured three individual curtains acting as layered portals progressing upstage, fabricated from platinum-colored Eclipse Satin. Each layer was independently controlled, with motion carefully timed to create a progressive reveal of the stage - a visual effect dependent on accuracy, synchronization, and consistency. 

This wasn’t a curtain that simply opened and closed. It was part of the storytelling. Rose Brand manufactured custom curtains, winches and an open platform automation control system to achieve Houston Ballet's objectives as described below. 

 

The Challenge 

How do you create complex, coordinated motion across multiple curtain layers, on a tight load-in schedule, without sacrificing the flexibility needed to build and refine cues during rehearsal? 

To achieve the intended effect, each curtain layer required: 

• Independent control across multiple lift points 

• Precise timing between layers to maintain the reveal sequence 

• Repeatable, reliable performance from rehearsals through performance 

 

The Solution 

Rose Brand and ADC delivered a system built around 30 ConTour™ winches, a compact and reliable spotline winch integrated with Axis1 Open Platform Automation™. Each winch operated as an independent axis, allowing every lift line to be programmed individually. This made it possible to fine-tune the shape and movement of each curtain layer. The result was a system where the curtains do not just move, they performed and reinforced the choreography on stage. 

 

Open Control That Adapts to Production Needs 

 

 

From the outset, Houston Ballet underscored that control and programming flexibility would be critical. The system was initially configured using ADC’s Axis1 Open Platform Automation System Controllers as a bridge between the Ballet’s existing Creative Conners software environment and the ADC ConTour Winches. 

 

During the build period, that system approach changed to gain greater flexibility and speed during technical rehearsals. The production team chose to program and control the curtain system directly from a GrandMA lighting console, utilizing Axis1 as the bridge between the lighting console and the ADC ConTour Winches.  Since Axis1™ is built on an open architecture and can natively interface via Art-Net (the lighting console's communication protocol), it allowed the more flexible and speedy system to be adopted immediately without any:

 

• Hardware changes 

• Additional integration effort 

• Downtime 

 

Built for Performance and Longevity 

The full system, developed collaboratively across production, engineering, fabrication, and automation teams, was designed not just for a single production, but as a reusable platform for future work. By combining ConTour™ winches with the Axis1 open control platform, Houston Ballet achieved a system that delivered accuracy, flexibility, and repeatability without limiting how the production evolved. 

 

See the System Test of These Gorgeous Venetian Contour Curtains, Winches & Open Platform Automation System: