The Technical Rider is not bureaucracy. It's your voice when you're not in the room.

It's 4:30 in the afternoon. The show starts at 8:00. You walk into a theater you've never seen before with six dancers, two suitcases of costumes, and a USB stick with your music. The stage manager meets you at the loading dock with a clipboard and a question that will define your evening: "Did you send us a rider?"

You didn't.

What follows is three and a half hours of barely controlled disaster. The stage floor is varnished hardwood — slick, unforgiving, dangerous for the barefoot contemporary work you've choreographed. There's no marley, and the theater doesn't have any in storage. Your lighting designer starts to explain the light plot and discovers the venue has 36 dimmer channels; your design needs 52. The sound system is stereo, but your score was mixed in four channels with specific speaker placement that was supposed to surround the audience. There's no warm-up space — the only room available is the hallway outside the restrooms. Your dancers are stretching on carpet tiles between audience members arriving early.

Now rewind. Different company, same theater, same Tuesday afternoon. They walk in and the stage manager greets them with a smile: "We've read your rider. The marley is down, we've assigned 34 channels based on your priority list, your sound engineer spoke with ours last week about the stereo fold-down, and there's a warm-up room with mirrors and a portable barre on the second floor. Coffee's in the green room. You have the stage at five."

The difference between these two arrivals isn't talent. It isn't budget. It isn't luck. It's a document — ten to fifteen pages, clear, precise, sent three weeks in advance — called a technical rider.

This article will teach you to write that document. Not as a technician, but as a choreographer who knows how to translate artistic vision into the language that theaters understand.

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1. What Is a Technical Rider?

A technical rider is the formal document where a company or artist specifies every technical need required to perform their work in a given venue. It's a contract of expectations. It's the bridge between what happens in your imagination — and in your rehearsal studio — and what will happen on a stage you may have never set foot on.

The word "rider" comes from the legal world: a rider is a clause appended to a contract. In the performing arts, it evolved to mean the full set of technical and logistical conditions a company requires. Every discipline uses it — music, theater, circus, opera — but in dance, the rider carries a particular weight because the relationship between the body and the stage is so direct and so physical. A musician can play on almost any surface. A dancer who lands a jump on the wrong floor can tear an ACL.

There's a critical distinction you need to understand from the start:

These two documents are designed to talk to each other. Your rider is a request; the venue's spec sheet is an inventory. The conversation between them — what matches, what's missing, what can be adapted — is the essence of pre-production for any touring work.

Your rider is also a living document. It changes with each production. It evolves as the piece evolves. It gets updated after every tour stop where you discover something you forgot to specify or something that turned out to be unnecessary. Think of it as a diary of your show's technical life — each version a little more precise, a little more battle-tested.

And who reads this document? The venue's technical director, first and foremost. But also the lighting crew, the sound engineer, the stage manager, the fly operator, the production coordinator of the festival that's considering programming you. Your rider is your professional voice when you're not in the room. It speaks for you at production meetings you'll never attend, in emails between people you'll never meet. It had better speak clearly.

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2. Anatomy of a Professional Technical Rider

A rider follows a conventional structure that the industry recognizes. When a technical director opens your PDF, they expect to find certain sections in a certain order. Respecting that structure isn't rigidity — it's courtesy. It means the person reading it can find what they need quickly, which means they can help you more effectively.

Let's walk through every section. For each one, I'll explain what it is, why it matters, and what to write if you're a choreographer creating your first professional work.

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2.1 General Information

This is the cover page of your rider: the who, what, and how long.

• Company name and legal entity (if applicable)
• Title of the work
• Duration (including intermission, if any)
• Number of performers (distinguish between dancers and any live musicians, actors, or other performers on stage)
• Creation year and premiere date
• Technical contact — name, phone, email of the person the venue should call for technical questions. This is crucial. It might be you, your lighting designer, your production manager, or your stage manager. Whoever it is, they must be reachable and knowledgeable. Do not list the choreographer as the technical contact unless the choreographer is genuinely the one managing technical logistics.
• Brief artistic description — two or three sentences that help the technical team understand the nature of the work. Not a press release. Something like: "A 45-minute contemporary dance piece for five performers. Performed barefoot on marley. Minimal set: one suspended fabric panel. Atmospheric haze throughout. Four distinct lighting states with crossfades."

This summary sets the tone. It tells the technical director, in thirty seconds, what kind of show they're dealing with.

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2.2 Stage Space Requirements

This is where you define the physical canvas your choreography needs.

Minimum stage dimensions — specify width (the opening between the wings), depth (from the downstage edge to the upstage wall), and height (clear height above the stage floor, relevant if you have lifts, aerials, or tall set pieces). Use meters. Always specify whether you're describing the proscenium opening (the visible frame the audience sees) or the total stage area (which includes the wings).

A quick vocabulary guide for the stage, because you'll encounter these terms constantly:

Floor surface — for dance, this is non-negotiable. Specify:

• Type: dance vinyl (marley), sprung floor, hardwood, or a combination
• Color: black marley is standard, but gray or white may be needed for specific lighting effects
• Condition: no seams catching bare toes, no bubbles, properly taped

If your dancers perform barefoot — as most contemporary dancers do — the floor surface is a safety issue, not an aesthetic preference. A varnished hardwood stage is a skating rink for bare feet. A concrete floor with thin marley over it will destroy knees and backs within a single run. Be explicit. Be firm.

Masking — describe what you need to hide the offstage areas:

• Full black drape (legs and borders creating a "black box" within the proscenium)
• Open stage (no masking — the architecture is visible)
• Specific backdrop: black, white, cyclorama, or a custom element you're bringing

Stage access — where do performers enter and exit? This matters for choreography. If your piece has entrances from both wings plus upstage center, say so. If a dancer enters through the audience, say so. If you need a crossover behind the cyclorama so dancers can move from stage left to stage right without being seen, say so.

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2.3 Lighting Requirements

As we explored in the stage lighting article, you already know how to describe the light your piece needs — direction, temperature, color, intensity, movement. Now you need to learn how to request it formally, in a document that a lighting technician can act on.

The light plot — this is the detailed technical drawing showing where every lighting fixture is hung, what type it is, what color gel it carries, and what dimmer channel it's connected to. In most professional productions, the light plot is created by your lighting designer, not by you. Your job as choreographer is to communicate your vision; their job is to translate it into a plot. The finished light plot is then attached to the rider as a separate document.

If you don't have a lighting designer (which is common for student productions and early-career work), your rider should describe your lighting needs in functional terms:

• Number of lighting states — how many distinct "looks" does your piece have? A lighting state is a specific combination of fixtures at specific intensities. A piece might have five states or fifty.
• Minimum channels/circuits — how many independently controlled lighting circuits do you need? Each channel controls one fixture or a group of fixtures. If your design requires 48 channels and the venue has 36, that's a conversation you need to have before you arrive.
• Types of fixtures needed — described by function, not by brand:

• Special lighting needs:

  • Haze or fog machine — haze makes light beams visible in the air, creating those shafts of light that are so powerful in dance. Specify haze (fine, atmospheric, lingers) vs. fog (thick, low-lying, dissipates). As we explored in the stage lighting article, the visibility of light beams depends entirely on particles in the air.
  • UV / blacklight — for fluorescent costumes or scenic elements
  • Practicals — any visible light sources on stage (lamps, candles, LED strips as set elements)

• Lighting console compatibility — if you're bringing a pre-programmed show file, specify what console it was created on (ETC Eos, GrandMA, Chamsys, etc.) and what format the file is in. If the venue has a different console, your lighting designer needs to know this in advance so they can rebuild or convert the programming.

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2.4 Sound Requirements

Sound in dance is often treated as an afterthought — "just press play on the laptop" — and that casualness is the source of countless technical disasters.

Playback system:

• What format is your music in? (WAV or AIFF for professional playback — never MP3 for a show)
• How many output channels? Stereo (2 channels) is standard. If your sound design uses surround (4+ channels), specify the speaker placement.
• What device plays it? A dedicated computer running QLab or similar show-control software is professional standard. A phone connected via Bluetooth is not. Never use Bluetooth for live performance — the latency is unpredictable, the connection can drop, and the audio quality is degraded. Always use a wired connection.

Microphones — if your piece uses spoken word, live singing, amplified breathing, contact microphones on the body or floor, or any live instruments, specify:

• Number and type of microphones
• Whether they need to be wireless (body-worn) or wired
• Specific placement requirements

Stage monitors — do your dancers need to hear the music from speakers on the stage floor? In large venues, the main speakers face the audience and the stage can be surprisingly quiet. Floor monitors or sidefills solve this. If your piece has tight musical cues or rhythm-dependent choreography, monitors aren't optional.

Connections needed:

• Outputs from your playback device (typically 1/4" jack, XLR, or 3.5mm mini-jack)
• DI boxes if needed (to convert unbalanced signals to balanced)
• Number of audio inputs you need at the mixing desk

Sound operator — does your company bring your own sound operator, or do you need one from the venue? If the venue provides the operator, you'll need to provide a detailed cue sheet so they can run your show.

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2.5 Scenic Elements and Props

Everything that's on stage that isn't a performer or a light.

Inventory list — every object, structure, fabric, or material that appears on stage:

• What it is
• Its dimensions and weight (especially important for anything that flies or gets suspended)
• Whether the company brings it or the venue needs to provide it

Suspension and rigging — if any element hangs from the fly bars, specify:

• Which element
• What fly bar or hanging point you need
• Weight of the element
• Whether it moves during the show (a fly cue) or stays static

Floor elements — tape marks, vinyl cutouts, objects placed on the marley. If anything is taped, glued, or anchored to the floor, say how.

Special effects — confetti, water, sand, pyrotechnics, live flame. These require early conversation because many venues have strict fire codes and safety protocols. If your piece uses any of these, flag it prominently in the rider. Don't bury "we pour 200 liters of water on stage" in a footnote.

For a student piece or early-career work, this section might be short: "One wooden chair, brought by the company. No suspended elements." That's perfectly fine. The section still needs to exist, even if it says "none," because a technical director scanning your rider needs confirmation that you've thought about it.

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2.6 Dressing Rooms and Logistics

This section is routinely forgotten by young companies, and it's routinely the source of the most frustrating problems on show day.

Dressing rooms:

• How many do you need?
• For how many people?
• Do you need mirrors, clothing racks, ironing facilities?
• Access to running water (for makeup, quick changes, cool-downs)?

Warm-up space — this is where the rider reveals that it was written by a dance company, not a rock band. Dancers need to warm up. It's not a luxury; it's a physical necessity to prevent injury. Specify:

• A room with a clean, smooth floor (not carpet, not concrete)
• Minimum size (enough for your full cast to move through pliés, tendus, and floor stretches)
• Available at least 90 minutes before showtime
• Ideally with mirrors and a portable barre, though you may need to bring your own

Load-in and load-out:

• What's the access like? Can a van or truck reach the loading dock?
• Is there a freight elevator or do you carry everything up stairs?
• What time can you start loading in?
• How long do you need for setup (be realistic — add a buffer)?
• How long do you need to strike and load out after the show?

Catering and hospitality — many festivals and venues provide meals or refreshments. If you have specific needs (vegetarian, allergies, number of meals), this is where they go. Don't be shy about this: a company that performs at 9 PM and hasn't eaten since noon does not give its best show.

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2.7 Technical Staff Required

Who does what, and who provides whom?

Staff the venue provides — specify how many technicians you need from the venue:

• Lighting technician(s)
• Sound technician
• Fly operator (if you have fly cues)
• Stage crew for set changes (if applicable)
• Follow spot operator (if applicable)

Staff the company provides — specify who travels with you:

• Lighting designer / lighting operator
• Sound operator
• Stage manager
• Production manager / tour manager
• Wardrobe / dresser (if quick changes require it)

Stage manager — if your piece requires a stage manager to call cues (light cues, sound cues, fly cues, performer calls), specify whether you bring yours or need one from the venue. For complex pieces, having your own stage manager who knows the show intimately is invaluable. For simpler works, the venue's crew can often handle it from a detailed cue sheet.

Be clear about this section. Nothing derails a tech rehearsal faster than the company assuming the venue provides a lighting operator while the venue assumes the company brings their own.

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2.8 Plans and Documentation

The rider is the main document, but it often comes with attachments:

• Light plot — technical drawing of the lighting design (typically created in Vectorworks, AutoCAD, or similar software; PDF for distribution)
• Stage plot / ground plan — overhead view of the stage showing the position of all scenic elements, performer entrances, and key spatial references
• Cue sheet — a chronological list of every technical cue in the show (light cue 1 at 00:00, sound cue 1 at 00:15, fly cue 1 at 02:30, etc.), including the trigger for each cue (musical moment, performer action, stage manager call)
• Contact sheet — names, roles, phone numbers, and emails for every member of the company's technical team

The rider without its attachments is an argument. The rider with its attachments is a plan.

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3. How to Read a Venue's Technical Spec Sheet

You've written your rider. Now a theater sends you their technical spec sheet — the "reverse rider," the document that tells you what they have. Reading it well is just as important as writing your own rider well, because the gap between the two documents is where all the problem-solving happens.

A typical venue spec sheet includes:

• Stage dimensions — total stage area, proscenium opening (width and height), depth, wing space, fly tower height
• Lighting inventory — number and type of fixtures, number of dimmer channels, console model, position of lighting bars
• Sound system — main PA speakers (brand, power, configuration), available inputs, monitor system, console model
• Fly system — number of fly bars, type (manual counterweight or motorized), load capacity per bar
• Rigging points — fixed points in the ceiling for hanging scenic elements outside the fly system
• Stage floor — material, condition, whether they have marley available (and what color)
• Power — total available electrical power, distribution points (relevant if you bring your own equipment)
• Access — loading dock dimensions, freight elevator capacity, distance from dock to stage
• Restrictions — no open flame, no fog (some venues with sensitive fire alarms prohibit it), no confetti, weight limits, noise curfews

Reading the Spec Sheet Against Your Rider

Here's where it gets practical. Go through your rider line by line and compare it against the spec sheet. Make three lists:

A concrete example: Your rider specifies 48 dimmer channels. The venue's spec sheet lists 36. What do you do?

First, don't panic. Go back to your light plot with your lighting designer and identify which channels are essential (the solo downlight in scene three, the cyclorama wash, the side light towers) and which are desirable but dispensable (the extra front wash you added for insurance, the backup backlight). Consolidate: can two fixtures that never light at the same time share a channel? Often, a 48-channel design can be intelligently compressed into 36 channels with minimal artistic compromise. The key is doing this work before you arrive, not during the tech rehearsal when everyone is watching the clock.

Understanding Basic Stage Plans

Venue spec sheets usually include a ground plan — a bird's-eye view of the stage. Learning to read it is straightforward:

• The downstage edge (closest to the audience) is typically at the bottom of the drawing
• The proscenium line is marked, showing where the frame of the stage opening falls
• Fly bars are drawn as horizontal lines across the stage, numbered from downstage to upstage
• Wing space is shown on either side
• A section view (side view) shows the height relationships: fly tower, proscenium height, sight lines from the audience

Don't be intimidated by these drawings. They're maps. And like any map, once you understand the legend, you can navigate.

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4. The Process: From Artistic Idea to Rider

You've built your choreography in the studio. Now it needs to travel. Here's how to translate your artistic vision into a rider, step by step.

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Step 1: Watch your piece with technical eyes

This is the hardest step, because it asks you to temporarily stop being the choreographer and become the producer. Watch a run-through of your piece — or, if it's not yet fully created, walk through it in your mind — and ask yourself at every moment:

• What does the floor need to be?
• What lighting state is this?
• Where does the sound come from?
• What objects are on stage?
• Where do performers enter and exit?
• What happens in the transitions?

Write everything down. Don't edit yet. Don't prioritize yet. Just inventory.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker has said that she thinks about space — including its technical conditions — from the very first moment of creation. The stage isn't a container that receives the dance after it's made; it's a partner in the making. If you adopt that mindset early, your rider won't be an afterthought. It will be an extension of your creative process.

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Step 2: Build the technical inventory

Take your raw notes from Step 1 and organize them by category: space, floor, lighting, sound, scenic elements, logistics. This is your first rough draft. It will be messy. That's fine. The point is to have everything on paper before you start making decisions about structure and priorities.

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Step 3: Prioritize — deal-breakers vs. nice-to-haves

Not everything in your inventory carries the same weight. Some things are non-negotiable — if they're missing, the show cannot happen safely or the artistic integrity is fatally compromised. Others are desirable — they make the show better but the show can survive without them.

Be honest with yourself about this distinction. It's the difference between a rider that gets taken seriously and a rider that gets set aside as unrealistic.

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Step 4: Consult your design team

The rider is not a solo project. If you have a lighting designer, they should write or co-write the lighting section. If you have a sound designer, same. If you have a set designer, same. Your role as choreographer is to ensure the rider reflects your artistic vision as translated by the people who understand the technical language. This collaboration is where the rider gets its precision.

If you're working alone — as many student choreographers do — this step becomes: consult the most experienced technical person you can find. A lighting teacher, a venue technician, a stage manager friend. They'll catch things you didn't think to include and challenge assumptions you didn't know you were making.

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Step 5: Write with clarity

Use clear, specific, unambiguous language. The person reading your rider has never seen your piece and may never meet you in person. They cannot read between the lines.

Vague: "We need good lighting and a nice atmosphere."

Clear: "Minimum 36 dimmer channels. Lighting design uses primarily side light (shin height and head height) with a full-stage backlight wash and three downstage specials. Haze required throughout. No front light in scenes 2 and 4. Light plot attached."

The first version tells the technical director nothing. The second tells them exactly what to prepare.

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Step 6: Include alternatives

This is the mark of a professional rider and the thing that will make technical directors love working with you. For every major requirement, offer a fallback:

• "Ideally, ETC Source Four profiles at FOH. Alternatively, any profile fixture with shutters."
• "Preferred: QLab playback via our own MacBook with XLR output. Alternative: venue provides playback from USB drive (WAV files, stereo, cue list provided)."
• "Preferred stage depth: 10m. Minimum workable depth: 8m with modified blocking for upstage diagonal."

This isn't weakness. It's intelligence. It tells the venue: we know what we want, we know the real world doesn't always match, and we've already thought about solutions. It transforms the rider from a list of demands into an invitation to collaborate.

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Step 7: Review, update, repeat

After every performance, ask: what did we forget? What did we over-specify? What did the venue provide that surprised us? Fold those lessons back into the rider. Version-number your document (v1.0, v1.1, v2.0) so everyone knows which version is current.

A rider that's been through ten venues is a vastly better document than a rider that was written in a studio and never tested against reality.

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5. Common Mistakes and Best Practices

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6. Technical Rider Template

Below is a functional template you can copy and adapt for your own production. Replace the bracketed placeholders with your specific information. Delete sections that don't apply, but think carefully before deleting — it's better to write "N/A" than to leave a gap that the venue fills with assumptions.

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TECHNICAL RIDER

[Company Name]

[Title of the Work]

Rider version: [v1.0] — Date: [DD/MM/YYYY]

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1. GENERAL INFORMATION

Brief description: [2–3 sentences describing the piece in terms that help the technical team understand its nature. Include key technical features: barefoot/shod, minimal/complex set, use of haze, live music, etc.]

Technical contact:

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2. STAGE SPACE

Notes on stage space: [Any additional information: "Minimum 2m wing space each side for costume changes," "No audience seating on stage," etc.]

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3. LIGHTING

Number of lighting states: [X]

Minimum dimmer channels required: [X] (Essential) / [X] (Preferred)

Fixtures required:

Special lighting needs:

• Haze machine (atmospheric haze, continuous)
• Fog machine (low fog, specific scenes: [specify])
• Follow spot ([X] operators needed)
• UV / Blacklight
• Practicals on stage: [describe]
• Other: [describe]

Lighting console: [Preferred console: e.g., ETC Eos family / GrandMA2 / Any — show file provided in [format]. If venue console differs, please inform us [X] weeks in advance.]

Light plot: [Attached as separate document: yes/no]

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4. SOUND

Playback:

Microphones:

Monitors: [X floor monitors / sidefills required on stage — essential for rhythm-dependent choreography / Not required]

Sound operator: [Company provides own operator / Venue to provide operator — cue sheet attached]

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5. SCENIC ELEMENTS AND PROPS

Rigging / Suspension: [Describe any elements that need to be hung from fly bars or rigging points. Specify bar number, weight, and whether element moves during show.]

Special effects: [Describe any effects: confetti, water, sand, live flame, pyrotechnics. If none: "No special effects."]

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6. DRESSING ROOMS AND LOGISTICS

Load-in / Load-out:

Catering / Hospitality: [X meals for X people on show day. Dietary requirements: specify. Water available on stage wings during performance.]

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7. TECHNICAL STAFF

Staff required from venue:

Staff provided by company:

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8. ATTACHED DOCUMENTATION

• Light plot (PDF)
• Stage plot / Ground plan (PDF)
• Cue sheet (light + sound cues, PDF)
• Sound files (USB / digital transfer — specify)
• Contact sheet (all company technical contacts)
• Photos / video of the work (link: [URL])

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9. SCHEDULE (suggested)

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End of technical rider — [Company Name] — [Title of Work] — Version [X.X]

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Closing

There's a moment, about two hours before every premiere, when the choreographer stands at the back of an empty theater and watches the tech crew bring the show to life. The marley is down and clean. The lights snap through their cues one by one — each one a decision you made months ago, now real, now visible. The sound check fills the space with your music for the first time. The stage manager runs through the cue sheet with the operators, and every call is answered. The dancers arrive at the warm-up room, and it's ready: clean floor, mirrors, barre, water.

This doesn't happen by magic. It doesn't happen because the universe rewards artistic talent with logistical grace. It happens because someone wrote a document — clear, specific, human — and sent it to people who know how to read it. It happens because a choreographer understood that the distance between vision and reality isn't bridged by hope. It's bridged by communication.

William Forsythe once said that choreography is "organizing bodies in space." But organizing bodies in space requires that the space cooperate — and the space cooperates when you've told it, with precision and respect, what you need. The rider is that act of telling.

You've spent months — maybe years — building a piece of art inside your body, inside your dancers' bodies, inside the walls of a studio. The rider is how that art survives the journey from the studio to the stage. Without it, you're asking the world to guess what you need. With it, you're telling the world exactly what your work demands, and you're giving every technical professional in the building the information they need to make it happen.

Your movement deserves a stage that's ready. The rider is how you make sure it is.

Don't leave your art at the mercy of assumptions. Don't walk into a theater hoping for the best. Write the document. Send it early. Update it often. And when you stand at the back of that theater two hours before curtain and watch everything fall into place — you'll know that the show didn't start when the lights came up.

It started when you wrote the rider.

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The stage doesn't care about your vision. The rider makes it listen.