Flair Event Services based in Dubai designs and delivers full technical production for a range of projects throughout the UAE and across the Middle East region.
The team currently nearly 70 full-time also engages in consultancy work and is headed by Managing Director Sameer “Sam” Rahman who has been in the industry since he was a teenager. He started working in a theatre in Dubai when at high school as well as DJ’ing and running his own lightshows, initially with 12 PAR cans and plenty of imagination.
Rahman is now also an award-winning lighting designer who has worked worldwide on a diversity of shows. He is Flair’s head of lighting and responsible for all investments as well as MD of the company and is a big advocate for Robe.
Rahman’s own appreciation of Robe started when he first ‘met’ the brand while working as a freelance LD, and again when he was still a teenager in the mid-noughties. He recalls the first major Robe installation in Dubai which was at Chi @ the Lodge, the first season he worked there was 2007, after which he convinced management to upgrade with some Robe fixtures.
Flair has Robe MegaPointes, Spiider LED washbeams and LEDBeam 150s in its inventory plus access to large dry hire inventories of other Robe models which they are planning to replace with their own stock.
In 2019, Rahman designed a show for Pakistani superstar RFAK (Rahat Fateh Ali Khan)’s world tour which included over 300 Robe fixtures – 48 FORTES, 96 Spiiders, 76 MegaPointes and 96 LEDBeam 150s plus four RoboSpots running BMFL FS luminaires.
“Robe is an industry leading brand, so there are many reasons to use it,” Rahman noted.
Service, backup and support are other big things when specifying or investing, and Rahman describes the team at Robe’s Middle East subsidiary: “phenomenal. Their diligence is second to none, and the pricing structure is very fair.”
Flair’s head of Technical Marno Snyman joined in 2022 and was delighted that they used so much Robe, having himself had many experiences with the brand working with companies such as Sound Stylists and others in South Africa.
“I absolutely love Robe” he enthused, “the colours are always excellent and well-matched between the different fixture ranges, and they think about other practicalities like making them light in weight.”
At Flair, Snyman oversees all the technical elements and oversees 90% of the shows, and in South Africa he worked on large projects like the SAMAs (South African Music Awards) and TV productions like Strictly, and he echoed Rahman’s comments on the reliability and effectiveness of working with a quality brand.
“It is always a pleasure for me to work with the Flair team – their show designs are constantly innovative and pushing the boundaries creatively and in terms of what is possible with the technology,” Elie Battah, MD of Robe Middle East, commented. “They are highly professional and consistent, and can always rely on our full support.”
