His Holiness XIV Dalai Lama of Tibet at Radio City Music Hall

When The Gere Foundation, Healing the Divide, and The Tibet Center of New York invited His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama of Tibet to deliver his 2007 teachings in New York City, they selected Empire Entertainment to serve as the production company for their series of major public events. His Holiness' teachings would be delivered in five, two-hour sessions over the course of three days and would cover Seventy Verses on Emptiness by Nagarjuna and the ‘Diamond Cutter Sutra' by the Shakyamuni Buddha. These two texts deal with the topic of ‘Emptiness' and convey Buddhism's most profound teaching on the wisdom aspect of the path to enlightenment. Following these teachings, The XIV Dalai Lama would also deliver an hour-long public talk on the subject of "Peace and Prosperity."

All six sessions would anticipate audiences of almost 6,000 people and would be simultaneously translated into three different languages: Cantonese, Mandarin and Vietnamese.Through partnership with Healing the Divide and The Tibet Center, Empire worked on every aspect of the two programs and helped secure Radio City Music Hall, develop plans for set design, marketing, logistics, technical management and sponsorship. In association with Gipson Design Group, Empire developed stage design, developed the technical production plan including rigging, soft goods, lighting design, sound design, production schedule and floor plan, and engaged all vendors and all simultaneous translation services.

The production team was able to secure several sponsors to donate their services and products to keep costs as low as possible. Onstage carpeting, dressing room and backstage furnishings were generously donated by ABC Carpet and Home. Turning Star generously fireproofed all onstage fabric pieces including the donated carpets and sacred Thankga banner which had been personally selected by the Dalai Lama and sent from India specifically for these teachings. In addition to image magnification projections on Radio City Music Hall's large LED screens, Empire coordinated the taping of all sessions with a five camera, high-definition video package. This was done in preparation for both a soon-to-be-released DVD version of the teachings and a National Geographic special release based on the Public Talk.The historic teachings drew a full house at Radio City and the public talk on Peace and Prosperity, introduced by Richard Gere was completely sold out. Following his New York visit, the Dalai Lama traveled to Washington DC where he was presented with the Congressional Gold Medal by President George W. Bush. Empire is honored to have had an opportunity to help present the teachings of His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama at Radio City Music Hall.

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