Named after writer and playwright Ivan Cankar, the building was designed by leading Slovenian architect Edvard Ravnikar and opened in 1982, complete with a large basement area that is fortified to withstand a nuclear attack!

It is the largest Slovenian cultural and congress centre and features six venues – the biggest is a 1650 capacity concert hall – plus several galleries and studio spaces. It’s both a producing and a receiving venue staging a wide variety of shows, events all year round, from opera to dance, popular music to choral, orchestra to drama ... and everything in between.

Sometimes there are multiple shows a day, and up to 15 different performances a week is not unusual during the busy periods!

The full time lighting department of eight people is currently run by Zoran Najdenov who is also the chief LD. It was his predecessor who specified their very first Robe moving lights - 575 Spot and Wash XTs - back in 2002 and these replaced a competitor product.

Since then they have not looked back,  with regular additions and upgrades to the moving light stock – always with Robe – as the demand for having quality and versatile moving lights on the rig by incoming productions has steadily increased.

The latest purchase was of 12 ROBIN LEDBeam 100s, recently delivered by Robe’s Slovenian distributor, MK Light Sound.

The Cankarjev Dom’s Robe inventory includes ColorSpot 1200E ATs, ColorMix 250s, ROBIN 600E Beams and Spots, ROBIN LEDWash 600s as well as the new LEDBeam 100s.

These are used in different combinations all around the various performance spaces, but primarily in the main concert hall.

The venue has also purchased a number of Anolis ArcLine 36 and ArcLine 36 Optic fixtures from MK Light Sound. Initially these were to light a specific set design, and since then, they have been useful for numerous other scenic applications.

Grega Plantan, one of the full time Lighting Department staff proudly points out that the very original fixtures are also still going strong after 10 years of hard labour! “That’s a great tribute to brand quality,” he affirms.

The original Robe products were chosen because of their great value for money, qualities still relevant today. Although there are cheaper options, the quest for quality and seeing a proper longer term investment has always been paramount with the venue.

Robe has been such a success with everyone there – from the designers and creative to the technicians – that they continued ‘working with winners’.

“Robe products are ideal for a busy venue like ours because they are well-engineered and ultimately reliable,” concurs Plantan. “Our schedules are always full-on and we don’t want to spend time on repairing kit. We need to know that when you put a light up in the rig it’s going to work … and this is the confidence that using Robe has given”.

He loves the new LEDBeams for their speed and brightness and their incredible ‘pocket’ size, however his favourite Robe fixture of the current stock is the ROBIN 600E Spot. “A great output to size ratio and a really great all-purpose fixture,” he comments.

Most of the shows staged in the Cankarjev Dom are lit and operated by the in-house lighting team using a range of consoles from grandMA and ETC.