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A Versatile Venue

You probably already know that The Apex is an award-winning music and entertainment venue in Bury St Edmunds.

But you might not know about the innovative behind-the-scenes technology that enables the unique auditorium to be reconfigured to suit pretty much any event.

The Apex offers a wide variety of shows; the diverse programme of music, including classical, pop, rock, jazz, blues, world, country and folk, sits alongside talks, comedy, dance and community events.

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Consequently, the auditorium needs to be flexible and adaptable, switching from an all-seated concert to an all-standing mosh pit, and pretty much anything in between. There could be a dance floor in the middle and seats all around, or seats in front of the stage and dancing at the back and sides. It can have a completely flat floor for exhibitions, dinner dances and other social functions, like the recent Beer Festival. The stage can also be set up ‘in the round’, or as a catwalk, as seen at Fashion Fusion.

The technology to facilitate all this shape-shifting is hidden under the floor. The main auditorium floor goes up and down on six screw-jacks (just like big versions of the one you would use to jack up your car to change a tyre). The orchestra pit is also a scissor lift, which goes down approximately 6 metres from stage level. The seats are built onto twenty-five ‘wagons’; each block can be plugged into the electricity supply and a trigger switch activates blowers which makes the seats hover on a cushion of air, enabling them to be glided into place. The orchestra pit can be used as a lift to take the rows of seats down to be stored under the stage and dance floor when they’re not needed.

A seating turnaround from flat floor to full seats takes 4 technicians approximately 3.5 hours to complete.

You can see a highly speeded up example in this video (from 1.21-1.28)

Apex – Promoters video from Paul Cook on Vimeo.

You can explore the building here (you can even stand on the stage) https://www.google.com/maps/@52.2458275,0.7101995,2a,82.2y,136.17h,107.59t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sbxM5nwNIAsJ5-B68h9DiGA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

See www.theapex.co.uk for more details.

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