Recently, The Esplanade stage was given a major makeover, as a troupe of 26 world-class ice skaters performed Swan Lake. We talked to the show’s artistic director, Tony Mercer, about the very cool job of building an ice rink in the tropics.

So where do you start with a project like this? 
If you imagine a very large baking tray, that’s what the rink looks like initially. There are several layers to go down, including 15km of pipe work. We circulate a mixture of water and antifreeze, and once cooled to -18 degrees, the pipes begin to frost over. This is when we lay four tons of crushed ice. [Then] for the next 24 hours, we spray the rink continuously every 15 minutes until the ice is 6cm thick – that’s about 13,000 litres of frozen water. It takes a team of eight people 36 hours of continuous work. 

How cold does the theatre have to be? 
Surprisingly, ice rinks survive in hot climes. In Cyprus, the stage was outdoors in temperatures of up to 42 degrees. The temperature inside the theatre doesn’t really matter to us, though the dancers don’t like to get cold. 

So where does one get tons of crushed ice? 
For the crushed ice we often contact the local fish market. We make sure we specify fresh ice, though. On one occasion we ended up with some that had already been used and it didn’t smell so good. 

Once the final curtain falls, how do you dispose of all that ice? 
We get to smash the rink up with a specially designed hammer. It’s a skilled job as we need to avoid breaking the pipework, but it’s a fantastically therapeutic way to get rid of any frustration. We’re always conscious of recycling what we can, so we often send the ice back to the suppliers. We’re sometimes asked if we can leave the rink for the public to use, [but] unfortunately we can’t. The theatre stage is needed for the next production and we have to pack up and head off to our next gig.