The Cortège
Los Angeles 2025
400 Drones
A Skyborne work by Studio Hock
The Cortège is an immersive open-air performance set in Los Angeles, a living procession of mythic figures, puppetry, sound, ceremony, and movement. For this production, Studio Hock shaped its aerial realm, designing a custom drone work that carried the story into the sky above.
The challenge was to make the drones feel inevitable. The Cortège was not a concert, not a festival, and not a conventional drone show. It was a wordless ritual about grief, transition, and collective renewal. The aerial work needed to support that emotional world without overpowering it.
As dusk fell and the arena filled with ceremony, hundreds of synchronized lights rose in unison. The drones appeared as apparitions, forming shifting constellations and symbolic shapes that mirrored the choreography below. Bodies moved across the field. Mythic figures emerged through smoke. Overhead, the sky became part of the procession.
Studio Hock approached the aerial composition as a ceremonial space, designing formations that felt like omens, spirits, constellations, and passages rather than spectacle or entertainment cues. Each image appeared, held, transformed, and vanished.
The result was a seamless connection between earth and sky. On the ground, a procession. Overhead, a constellation.
The drones did not interrupt the world of The Cortège. They completed it.
“An otherworldly spectacular unlike anything Los Angeles has seen.”
“Part ritual, part performance, and part festival.”
“Choreographed drones creating new constellations in the sky”
“We loved collaborating with Keenan and Studio Hock on The Cortège! We really appreciate his elevation of drone art and meeting our desire for more art-forward and abstract designs (which is rare in the space). On top of being a consummate professional, he is a joy as a human. He listens, he delivers and the end result is better than expected. We can’t recommend Studio Hock enough!”
