The 2025 Army–Navy Gala, held at the Baltimore Convention Center, came to life with a spectacular lighting design created by Christina Rupp, using PARAGON fixtures from Elation Professional supplied by Afterglow Lighting.
The event, held ahead of the 126th Army–Navy football game—one of the oldest and most celebrated rivalries in U.S. college football—featured a completely transformed ballroom with a main stage, dance floor, and a variety of scenic elements honoring those who serve in the armed forces.
A light capable of doing it all
Afterglow Lighting, based in Elkridge, Maryland, is a full-service stage lighting company and one of the early adopters of Elation’s award-winning PARAGON LED profile moving head.
Rupp, a lighting designer and master electrician with a decade of experience in the industry, had previously worked on Army–Navy related projects, although this marked her first time designing the Gala. She frequently collaborates with Afterglow and was brought onto the project by the company and the client, VPC.
This was not a standard corporate design with stage and audience lighting. We needed lighting that could transition from a formal dinner to onstage presentations, to performances by bands, cheerleaders, and dance groups, and finally to a late-night dance party. We needed clean stage washes and audience lighting, but also pickups, accent lighting, and vibrant effects, while supporting other elements like walkways and videos. We needed a light that could do it all, she explained.
Looks tailored to every moment
Rupp led the design and operation of 32 PARAGON S fixtures, along with 12 SEVEN BATTEN 72 units and other equipment. “I love using the PARAGONs for their diffusion options and their wash capabilities”, she said. “I used them at the Johns Hopkins commencement ceremony and they really impressed me. I knew I wanted to use them again on future projects”.
The versatility of the PARAGON fixtures made them an ideal solution for the Gala’s wide-ranging production needs. On stage, the designer created tailored looks with distinct colors for each branch of the armed forces as the MC highlighted their accomplishments. The design then shifted to entirely different looks for other presentations, maintaining a dynamic and fluid visual language. A full band also performed on stage, playing throughout dinner and into the late-night dance party.
A centrally lit walkway
A central walkway ran through the ballroom and was used by the MC, performers such as the color guard, and guests as they arrived. “Anyone walking down it, or when the MC moved into the audience or onto the dance floor, was beautifully lit by the PARAGONs”, Rupp explained.
Red, white and blue
The designer created a dynamic walk-in look with slow-moving effects, maintaining a red, white, and blue theme from the national anthem into the dinner atmosphere.
The result was a calm dinner atmosphere built around colors representing both the Army and the Navy. The look was very well received, especially because we could carefully frame and focus the PARAGON fixtures to place the blue precisely at the center of the scenic element on stage, creating a striking three-dimensional effect, Rupp explained.
The SEVEN BATTEN 72 fixtures, six-foot full-color batten wash luminaires, were used to enhance the scenic elements from above and below, adding depth and visual dimension.
From calm elegance to high-energy celebration
Rupp also leveraged the PARAGON’s TruTone variable CRI engine, switching between high and low CRI settings to create a more dynamic visual atmosphere, and used the fixture’s animation wheel to generate different looks throughout the evening.
During dinner, for example, she applied slow-moving animations to the walls combined with custom gobos, a combination that received many compliments. Later, during the dance party, she shifted to more animated gobo transitions, exploring the fixture’s graphic capabilities more extensively.
System configuration
The setup included an upstage truss, a downstage truss, and four perpendicular trusses extending over the audience, where the PARAGON fixtures were installed and widely used for pickups and accent lighting. “Whenever we needed to light the audience or the band, or add more visual punch to a scene, I went straight to the PARAGON because I knew it would be a simple and very effective solution”.
Afterglow
Afterglow’s experienced team played a key role in executing the design. Josh Watson drafted the lighting plot with Rupp’s guidance and preferences in mind, while lighting technicians Jake Myers, Galen Newell, and Ethan Cooper handled the pre-rigging, patching, and load-in management.
Afterglow was a big reason this project turned out so successfully. They have everything down to a science and helped tremendously. I’ve known Josh for a long time and trust him completely, especially when it comes to fixture selection. The team is prepared, professional, and genuinely kind. I love working with them, Rupp concluded.
The 2025 Army–Navy Gala was managed and designed by Chicken Scratch and executed in collaboration with VPC.
