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Celine Dion will perform tribute to Michael in her new Vegas show

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110315/ap_en_ot/us_celine_dion_vegas


Dion returns to recession-hit Vegas with new show
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LAS VEGAS – On the stage that French-Canadian power ballads built, Celine Dion rolls her body, drops her hips and shimmies in a gold sparkly mini-dress that looks like it was swiped from Beyoncé's closet.

This is Dion as Tina Turner, her robust voice stretching into a soulful cover of "River Deep, Mountain High" as a row of back-up singers groove behind her during a sound check in the near-empty Colosseum at Caesars Palace. Or at least this is as Tina Turner as the "Beauty and the Beast" crooner is going to get in her Las Vegas sequel.

Dion's new show, opening Tuesday on the Las Vegas Strip, is a stripped-down tribute to Old Hollywood comprised of a 31-person orchestra, a trio of back-up singers and an entourage of guitarists, drummers and a pianist, all clad in black tuxedos and cocktail dresses. Gone are the Cirque du Soleil-style dancers and theatrics that saw Dion harnessed to a cable and flown in the air during her previous, five-year stint at the Colosseum that ended in 2007.

A lot is riding on the encore show. Dion, who gave birth to twin boys nearly five months ago, is tending to an expanded family while trying to mirror or surpass her previous success in a city that has yet to pry itself free from the embrace of a brutal recession.

Along with her Tina Turner tribute, Dion performed songs made famous by Michael Jackson, Billy Joel and Ella Fitzgerald hours before a preview performance. There was also a mod homage to James Bond and a "Smooth Criminal" jam session.

"From Michael Jackson to James Bond to 'Mr. Paganini,' it's so different, and it's so classy, and it's fun," Dion said of the show. "Different flavor. Different colors of music."

Las Vegas executives herald Dion as the successor to legendary Sin City headliners like Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, while praying she'll once more sell out nightly concerts despite the state's record unemployment rates and a sluggish tourist market.

Caesars Palace President Gary Selesner said the three-year production is a gamble. Executives questioned reopening the show amid Nevada's 13 percent unemployment, the highest in the nation. Caesars lost $831.1 million last year, or roughly $3.5 million more than its net income in 2009. Nearby, stretches of the Las Vegas Strip are replete with abandoned casino projects. When "A New Day" opened in Las Vegas in 2003, the unemployment rate in Nevada was 5.2 percent.

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Complete entertainment coverageIf anyone can speed up Las Vegas' recovery, however, it is Dion, Selesner said. Ticket purchases have so far exceeded the pace of sales for "A New Day," and executives expect the French-Canadian singer to drive convention business, room rentals, travel to Las Vegas and gambling.

"Certainly, Sinatra was one era. Elvis was another era. I like to think Celine is the next era," Selesner said. "People still want to see the big stars get on the stage and see their hits, and Celine has got some big hits."

Dion said she tries not to dwell on the tall expectations. "There are a lot of people talking to me about that. I am just a singer," she said Saturday in between tending to her newborns and show rehearsals.

"I want people to come and not feel disappointed. That's my most important job," said Dion. "I personally don't think I have anything to do with the economy."

Under her new contract, Celine will perform 70 shows a year starting Tuesday. The show will include the romantic opuses that made Dion an international star, including "Where Does My Heart Beat Now" and "It's All Coming Back to Me Now." It also has Dion singing scat in a parade of sequined gowns with thigh-high slits. The show's set-list was still being tweaked as of Saturday.

"You are going to be exposed to an expanded part of her probably that has always been there but maybe she couldn't do in the last show," said director Ken Ehrlich, who also produced this year's Grammy Awards show.

Dion will likely perform a memorial to the belated Jackson, a longtime musical influence. She said he attended a performance of "A New Day," then probed her about the experience.

"He was probably interested in coming here and performing here," Dion said. "I really wanted to kind of sing a few of his songs to tell people how big of a loss that is for him to not be here any longer."

Jackson wasn't the only A-lister who mulled moving to Sin City after Dion's opening night at Caesars. The show is credited for launching a wave of concert series that recalled Sinatra and Presley in Las Vegas. Since Dion's Caesars stint, the Colosseum has hosted Elton John, Bette Midler, Cher and Jerry Seinfeld.

"More pressure, right?" Dion quipped when told of comparisons being drawn between her and Sinatra. "There is one Sinatra, and there never will be another one. The same thing with everyone else. I want to give the best of me and then I can never be disappointed and say I should have done better."

Before she left to launch a world tour in 2008, "A New Day" grossed more than $400 million over five years.

Caesars spent $95 million to build the Colosseum for Dion in 2003, complete with a humidifier to protect her voice. It seats more than 4,000 people. The show opened to bad reviews, but was a commercial triumph.

Dion was originally expected to start her new show at Caesars in June 2010, but five failed in-vitro fertilization attempts delayed those plans. She delivered twin sons Nelson and Eddy in October, and began rehearsing for her March opening in January as she continued to breastfeed the babies and care for her 10-year-old son with the help of her mother, sister and a nanny.

In that time, Dion also squeezed in a performance at the 83rd Academy Awards last month.

"I didn't think I would be ready after this pregnancy, but everything is smoother than I thought," said Dion, who is living with her brood at Caesars while a nursery is added to her lakeside home outside Las Vegas.

Dion's wide-ranging voice was as ripe as always during a preview performance Thursday at Caesars.

For the opening number, she wore a bedazzled white strapless gown as she belted out Journey's "Open Arms" on a stage dressed in sheer curtains. As she approaching the booming chorus, the curtains dropped to reveal rows of musicians across the stage.

Later in the show, a video showed images of her oldest son blowing out his birthday candles and of the twins being baptized at a Las Vegas church, and performances by a young Dion at the dawn of her career.

A chandelier twinkled above the stage during a performance of "Because You Loved Me," smoke licked at Dion's heels during "All by Myself," and in a haunting mid-concert rendition of Jacques Brel's "Ne Me Quitte Pas," Dion tearfully contemplated the loss of a lover in her native French.

The concert hall swelled at the emotion. Women cried, cheered on their feet and wiped their eyes dry.

"She's got the best voice in the whole wide world," said Naomi Giancola, a Las Vegas ticket vendor and Dion fan. "I don't care what she sings. She's just my No. 1."
 
Celine is so right.. MJ not being here is a huge loss. I've been feeling it since 2009. Music stars are no longer exciting and the whole world of entertainment is so blah without MJ
 
She's wonderful... a kind, sensitive person, too, great mother and she seems to be so real and knows how to appreciate one's kindness and beauty, like she does when it comes to Michael.. Very touching.
 
This is great :) the woman is one of my favorite singers! luv her :)
 
http://www.rttnews.com/Content/EntertainmentNews.aspx?Section=2&Id=1576483&SM=1

(RTTNews) - Michael Jackson is getting a special tribute from Celine Dion. The "My Heart Will Go On" singer has launched a brand new show from Las Vegas' Caesars Palace. Now, part of Dion's new show, appropriately titled "Celine," features a section dedicated to MJ. She performs two of Jackson's classics - "Ben" and "Man in the Mirror."

"I'll never forget the day he came to see my show," Dion says to USA Today in a recent interview about her encounter with the King of Pop.

"He sat toward the back. Afterward he came to talk to me. He wanted to know about doing the show, what it took. I think he was interested in maybe doing the same thing on the Strip."

Newsweek reports that Dion will receive an estimated $100 million for 210 shows over the next three years. When she performed on the strip from 2003 to 2008 she managed to sell out 700 consecutive performances.
 
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2011-03-11-celine11_VA_N.htm

"I admired Michael a lot," says Dion, adding that she first took notice of the icon when he sang Ben on a TV show she watched. She reprises that song as well as Man in the Mirror in Celine, complete with perfectly placed yelps.

Her advice to Jackson: Go for it, so long as you can make sure that the theater's humidity level stays at a throat-friendly 55%. Caesars Palace's Colosseum achieves that through a vast network of humidity-generating ducting.
 
Las Vegas superstar Celine Dion talked with “Extra” host Mario Lopez about her tribute to Michael Jackson.

“It feels great to be back,” Dion told Mario. “It’s definitely a totally different show, it feels more glamorous and very chic. And you know me and the fashion, the dresses…”

As for the Michael Jackson tribute in her show, Dion said she wanted to honor her “inspiration,” saying when she met him, he asked about what it was like doing a show in Las Vegas. “We were actually in this room and he said, ‘Celine, I just want to know how it is to be here, how you do it every night? Does it make you happy?’ I think he wanted to eventually come and perform here. It was an amazing honor to meet with him and he was an amazing inspiration to me.”

http://extratv.warnerbros.com/2011/03/mario_lopez_with_celine_dion_dieting_twins_michael_jackson.php
 


Her speech:
When I was 15 years-old, I saw Michael on television and he changed my life. I was never the same after that.

Because of him I decided that I needed to learn how to speak and sing in english. Because it was how he sang.

He came to see my show a few years ago. He even sat in that seat right over there. And I don't think I saw anybody else that night other than him.

He left us far too soon.

But with an amazing legacy of songs, he thought the world how to dance to his music. and tonight we have a chance to remember in other way.

Beginning with one of the first songs, I remember him singing.
Click to expand...
 
MsCassieMollie said:
Her speech:

When I was 15 years-old, I saw Michael on television and he changed my life. I was never the same after that.

Because of him I decided that I needed to learn how to speak and sing in english. Because it was how he sang.

He came to see my show a few years ago. He even sat in that seat right over there. And I don't think I saw anybody else that night other than him.

He left us far too soon.

But with an amazing legacy of songs, he thought the world how to dance to his music. and tonight we have a chance to remember in other way.

Beginning with one of the first songs, I remember him singing.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...


:cry:



Thanks Celine! :give_heart:
 
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