USD is a committee representing all of the various dance societies at Southampton. They hold an annual competition to which approximately 10 universities from the London and South of England area are invited. The universities compete across multiple categories of dance, judged by a panel of professional dancers. Since 2020, StageSoc has been asked to provide technical services for the competition.

The competition is held in a large sports hall, since a few hundred people will attend.

2020: Places Leisure Centre, Eastleigh
2021: No competition due to COVID-19
2022, 2023: Jubilee Sports Hall, Highfield Campus
2024: Places Leisure Centre, Eastleigh

(Do not be disheartened by the first paragraph. USD 2024, also in Places, was a much more successful venture. Read on to find out more.

https://www.placesleisure.org/centres/places-leisure-eastleigh/ This was a difficult venue to use, due to its very large size. No usable PA is installed. The stage was placed in the middle of the hall, presenting issues for distributing power to our equipment. The only power outlets were a small number of 13A sockets at the side walls. The acoustic was very difficult to control with no soft surfaces, and the audience were sat on tiered bleachers - the audience noise was incredibly loud.

2024 Update: Venue was easier to use with preparation. SUSU's D&b Q-series passive PA plus the Turbosound monitors were run off the installed 13A power - sound was great with this. Each socket seems to be on a different phase and circuit (all outlets are labelled), so we split power between left and right between two phases. Still need loads of cable! This year we got access to the meeting room which we used to load the kit in on the Friday evening before we had access to the hall as it has an external door leading to the loading bay. This became our “Production Office”. We used pipe and drape along the back of the stage (see pictures) which improved the acoustic significantly.

USD Competition 2024 at Places Leisure Centre Eastleigh. Pastries acquired from Matt's Bakery down the road!

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/sportandwellbeing/facilities/jubilee-sports-centre.page This was a much better venue. The room is smaller and a large amount of carpet matting was put out across most of the floor (this is necessary so that the audience chairs didn't mark the floor, but it vastly improved the acoustic - it takes lots of work to put them all out though!). Lots of 13A sockets are available along the left side wall (as you enter) and the dance floor was placed along this wall giving easy access to power. A PA is available although not recommended as the sole sound system (it's not particularly powerful and has no subs); we didn't actually use it and relied on our hired PA instead.

No lighting or stage (other than the dance stage which USD organise). A “tech” table is usually set up just to the side of the stage, where you can position your audio gear with a good view of the stage and a good sense of the stage mons level.

In 2023 and 2024 we hired pipe and drape from SUSU as a backdrop, and put battery uplighters against it. This significantly improved the aesthetic and acoustic.

Sound:

• PA to audience, plus monitors onto the stage. Ensure the judges' table (just in front of the stage) gets a good (but not too loud) sound. Subs are important for a lot of the music. If any of your speakers are passive, make sure you acquire amplifiers.
• Mixer. In 2022 we used a digital mixer (Behringer XR18). This was incredibly useful because it allowed us to mix the sound from any point in the room. Bear in mind that 2.4GHz interference will be high in a room full of 400-ish university students, so ensure a good networking solution is present if you do this. It's strongly recommended to have at least one device controlling the mixer over a non-wireless connection at all times (e.g. a laptop connected to the mixer via a router over ethernet).
• One or two microphones, for announcements, presenters between dances, and awards. Handheld radio mics are practical, but using the StageSoc radio mic in 2022 presented issues with the signal cutting out intermittently due to people being in the signal path. Ensure you have a wired mic with a long cable available as a backup. Microphone stands are generally not required.
• Audio tracks - make sure these are provided for you before the competition. It is advisable to listen through all of them to ensure good quality - however, remember that this is competitive. Teams will be used to practicing with the tracks they provided, so do not edit them in a way which would cause the dancers issues. A script exists to normalise the volume of tracks automatically - speak to a previous sound mentor to get hold of it. Use QLab (MacOS) or VLC (Windows) to organise and consecutively play the files. Do not rely on playing the files from an internet source, ensure they are downloaded locally and that you have backups! You will need to wait for the introduction of each team, then they will enter the stage and remain still. Once the crowd noise has died down (so that the dancers can hear the track), start the track.
• House music - get a Spotify playlist from the USD team beforehand and make sure it is downloaded. Ensure somebody has an ad-free account to play these. You will need to play house music during any breaks and before/after the event.
• Freestyle Dance-off - a small group of dancers will take turns to improvise dances to music. USD should provide a playlist of tracks to be used for this. You will need to play a track, and then after a short period someone from USD will indicate to you to fade out and then skip to the next track.
• Dance-off Final - in 2022 the final 4 freestyle dancers were pitted against each other, but given the option to choose their own tracks. You will therefore need access to the internet to find whatever music the dancers ask for.
• Power/sounds distro - you will need a lot of cables, as the venue will be large. Consider hiring power distribution and XLR/Speakon cables. You need to make sure all cables are taped down along their length in a visible colour, as dancers will run across them getting on/off stage. Past experience suggests a minimum of 4 rolls of good quality white gaffer tape is necessary. In 2024 we supplied gaffer tape for taping down the dance floor as well. We used at least 6 rolls total.

You will want a reasonable networking setup, not only so you can communicate with your equipment (mixers and the like), but also because 400+ people will be crammed onto the venue's (probably low number of) wireless access points, and you want something better than that. You also don't want said 400+ people to be able to get onto your network and control your mixer. That isn't very good.

The most ideal situation is to run your own wireless network and use the venue's wired network as an uplink. This may or may not be possible depending on the venue (Jubilee: probably if you have the MAC of the router whitelisted; Places: no, it is not possible to get on the wired network). If you cannot get on the wired network you may have some luck bridging from the wireless network anyway (which while it does not improve the uplink congestion problem, does fix the others).

In 2024, George Peppard and James Turner ran a StageSoc network using a router bridged to the guest WiFi network, a switch at the tech desk and a wireless access point (big and of the enterprise variety, from Netgear) hidden behind the pipe and drape but pointing vaguely out at the stage and audience. This was quite a successful venture, and George even got reception from the StageSoc wireless network when he went to the venue's cafe for a cappuccino (which was, unlike the network, disappointing).

We also changed the SSID and pre-shared key of the network to the same as The Annex. Whilst, if we were to do this in The Annex, it would be a man-in-the-middle attack, we decided that in Places it wasn't, and it worked quite well and allowed the crew's devices to join the network automatically when they reached the venue. We suspect most of them did not even notice.

Don't rely on wireless communications at all. Rely only hesitantly on your wired network. Unless you really know what you are doing you should come prepared with a backup plan or several. In 2024, with StageSoc having not done our own network at a venue before, we had four backup plans.

In 2020, we had very little idea what to expect, and turned up on the morning with no preparation. We did not enjoy this experience!

In 2022, we had lots of discussions with USD beforehand to ensure everything was organised. With a month to go before the competition ensure you have:

• Confirmed the date of the competition and venue
• Confirmed the date/time of a tech run and get in/out
• Confirmed the technical requirements with USD
• Had assurance that you will receive all of the backing tracks before the competition
• Organised any hires which are required (e.g. a PA) and allocated any StageSoc equipment. Bear in mind that shows may be happening in the Annex at the same time.
• Communicated the costs that USD will incur. This should be the standard StageSoc hire fee of £35 per show, plus £35 for an external venue, plus consumables (this will be significant because of the amount of tape). Ensure USD are happy with the cost of hires as well, although USD need to be the named party on the hires and they will pay for them directly.

2023:

2024: Returned to Places Leisure Centre but this time being prepared. All previous lessons implemented and the show went really well. Places can be a good venue if preparation is put into it! Here's our show resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Z0seL1NTNRrLHiUbgqobBR4IHHbKfkrh?usp=sharing

Organise a time to go to the venue with all of your equipment, and set it all up. Test the sound levels, make any EQ adjustments, and ensure any radio mics have good signal (although they may be blocked by people during the event). Test the levels of the tracks and ask the USD people if they are happy with the sound levels on stage (you will obviously need to completely re-adjust them during the event). This is the perfect moment to realise that you don't have enough cables! Remember to record how everything was set up, because you will probably need to take it down before the event.

We didn't get to do this in 2024 so had to be super organised.

One fantastic advancement in 2022 was having a get in during the night before (7pm-10pm). This let us set up at a sensible pace and in a thorough manner.

Make sure the crew arrive as early as possible (i.e. as soon as the first USD people arrive). This will mean an early morning! The hour or so before visiting universities begin to arrive is your chance to finally check that everything is working and sounding good.

It will be a long day, and you will be subject to a lot of noise (both from the PA and the audience - they get very loud!). Ensure that you can provide earplugs to all crew members (these are available in PPE box in Upper Store). Crew will need to take regular breaks throughout the day, so if necessary draw up a rota to ensure enough crew are attending throughout. Ensure the crew remain fed and hydrated.

It may be worth calling for new, fresh crew to come and help at the get out, since the rest of your crew will have been working all day.