The Immortal
http://lasvegasmagazine.com/2011/12/10/the-immortal/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Cirque du Soleil production captures Michael Jackson’s extraordinary appeal
By Erin Dostal
When Cirque du Soleil’s creative team first began putting together the Michael Jackson THE IMMORTAL World Tour, it made sense to start where Jackson did when he was writing his groundbreaking music: Neverland Ranch.
It was from that intimate, iconic place—Jackson’s fairy-tale, adulthood home—that the world tour grew into the ultimate homage for the generational musical force that was Michael Jackson. “The show feels like the concert that never happened,” says Cameron McKinlay, a dancer in the show. “It’s the final show Michael never got to perform.”
McKinlay, who was formerly a dancer in The Beatles LOVE at The Mirage, says this show is different from anything else Cirque has done before, and that viewers will see Jackson in a way they had never seen or heard before. “Ours is an arena-style show,” McKinlay said. “It’s a hybrid of a rock concert and a Cirque show.”
While LOVE has about 2,000 seats in its theater, 13,000-14,000 people at any specific show will be able to view Michael Jackson THE IMMORTAL in Las Vegas when it comes to the Mandalay Bay Events Center through Dec. 27.
The $60 million tour, which has nearly 50 stops, is larger than life in just about every way, just like Jackson was. The show has 220 total crew and cast members, 65 of them being dancers or acrobats. The traveling show, which will stop everywhere from Montreal to Miami, has 38 semitrailers of equipment that come with it, including three that are solely full of the approximately 250 costumes used in the show.
Zaldy Goco, the show’s costume designer, says his goal was “bringing to life this magical world that Michael lived in.” After viewing some of the costumes—green monsters for “Thriller,” shiny, masked silver soldiers, several shades of swans and slinky, sexy acrobats—it’s easy to see that the magic and surrealism that inspired Jackson were Goco’s inspiration as well.
Fan reactions so far, McKinlay says, have been emotional, especially because the King of Pop’s death was so recent. “You look in the audience and see a lot of die-hard fans crying,” he says of the end of the show. “It’s a big production, and people love it.” The final song in the show is Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror.” The show starts with “Childhood,” a highly personal but lesser-known Jackson song.
McKinlay says the show is “nonstop” for him, because he’s in almost every number, as are most of the other dancers—Jackson was, of course, as much a dancer as he was a singer. He was an all-around performer, McKinlay says, which comes across in the show. “Smooth Criminal” is the dancer’s favorite, though, because of Jackson’s cool, signature dance moves. “Watching it on TV when I was a kid, I always wanted to be one of those guys from the music video, doing that lean,” he says. “Now I get to do it, too.”
“As a performer, you can’t help but be inspired by him,” McKinlay says. “He could pull off anything.” And it’s clear that in this over-the-top tribute tour, Cirque du Soleil can, too.
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