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The Legend Lives On - Official Cirque du Soleil 'Immortal World Tour' Discussion

Petrarose said:
It seems few have been able to see the giving tree, pity.
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I was so overwhelmed that I didn't even realise it was missing! Haha, But I can't be disappointed. The whole experience was too amazing to think about a missing prop, even if it was the famous giving tree.
 
Petrarose said:
It seems few have been able to see the giving tree, pity.
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I was lucky... I saw it twice.

I have to admit, the show felt different without it. I wish they could find a way to replace it, even though CGI.

I will see the show again (no idea which city), and hopefully, it won't feel as strange without the tree top as in Vegas
 
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Marissa87 said:
I was so overwhelmed that I didn't even realise it was missing! Haha, But I can't be disappointed. The whole experience was too amazing to think about a missing prop, even if it was the famous giving tree.
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Completely agree with this :D I'm the same :)
 
I saw it 3 times with the giving tree, but I don't think I'll miss it, I'll just enjoy the show, the changes and my entire evening with cast and fans! :)

TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!! Yyyaaayyy So excited!
 
my entire evening with cast and fans!
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Wasn't the fan atmosphere amazing though?!?! The random cheers of "We love you, Michael". Personally, I don't have any friends in my everyday life who like Michael like I do - so to be at Cirque and see other fans cheering and singing along and dancing and swarming to buy merchandise. It was euphoric. Ugh, I loved it.
 
Can someone plz tell me where are the best seats to view the show I really want to be able to see everything. Plz :)
 
FvrAngel said:
Can someone plz tell me where are the best seats to view the show I really want to be able to see everything. Plz :)
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I recommend anything from the 5 to 7 o'clock position no matter how far back or up you go. When I went (Feb.11) my seat was at the 3 o'clock position and there was so much going on.........on the screen, air, stage, etc., you just can't take it all from the side. :no:

I'll get to see the show again on June 23, 2012, but since I bought this ticket a long time ago, my seat is at the 9 o'clock position. :girl_tantrum:
 
Memefan said:
I was lucky... I saw it twice.

I have to admit, the show felt difference without it. I wish they could find a way to replace it, even though CGI.

I will see the show again (no idea which city), and hopefully, it won't feel as strange without the tree top as in Vegas
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Oh lucky you and lucky Canadians!!!!!
 
SimplyMagic said:
I recommend anything from the 5 to 7 o'clock position no matter how far back or up you go. When I went (Feb.11) my seat was at the 3 o'clock position and there was so much going on.........on the screen, air, stage, etc., you just can't take it all from the side. :no:

I'll get to see the show again on June 23, 2012, but since I bought this ticket a long time ago, my seat is at the 9 o'clock position. :girl_tantrum:
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I second the between 5 and 7 oclock seats. I was second level, second row at about the 7 oclock position and it was great.
 
For those of you who already went, how long was the show? Two hours?
 
http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/...l-Michael-Jackson-area-venues-starting-Friday

'Immortal' Michael Jackson at area venues starting Friday

Cirque Du Soleil channels Michael Jackson in new production

<fb:like class=" fb_edge_widget_with_comment fb_iframe_widget" width="429" action="recommend" show_faces="false" send="false" font="" href="" ref="artrectop"></fb:like>3:49 PM, Mar. 26, 2012 |


<!--Main fact box -->CIRQUE DU SOLEIL&#8217;S MICHAEL JACKSON: THE IMMORTAL WORLD TOUR

When: 8 p.m. March 30 and 31 and 4 p.m. April 1
Where: Prudential Center, 165 Mulberry St., Newark
Tickets: $53-$253, available through ticketmaster.com.
ALSO: April 3-5 at Madison Square Garden, New York City and April 10-11 at Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia

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-->To say that the new Cirque du Soleil touring show &#8220;Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour&#8221; is a huge undertaking would be an understatement.
The show bopping its way across the country with upcoming stops at area venues including Newark&#8217;s Prudential Center (March 30-April 1), New York City&#8217;s Madison Square Garden (April 3-5), and Philadelphia&#8217;s Wells Fargo Center (April 10-11) brings with it high expectations.
First of all, it&#8217;s a Cirque du Soleil production; almost everything the Montreal-based entertainment company touches &#8211; from the circus world it&#8217;s redefined to Las Vegas where its shows dominate the Strip &#8211; has turned to gold.
And this show is all about Michael Jackson, who whatever you may say about his unconventional life and tragic death in 2009 at age 50, was universally recognized as a consummate showman who redefined pop music and helped create the music video genre.
Add to all of that the reality that this is a touring arena show with 65 performers and 35 trucks of equipment, sets and costumes and you&#8217;ve got one big show.
Ultimate opportunity

But Tara Young, the woman charged with making sure the magic happens like clockwork for each performance, said she doesn&#8217;t look at &#8220;Immortal&#8221; as a challenge. Instead, Young, the show&#8217;s artistic director, said she sees &#8220;Immortal&#8221; as the ultimate opportunity.
&#8220;We have some of the best people in the business from across the world to bring this show together. I see this show as an opportunity every day to make a difference and to raise the bar every single day,&#8221; Young said. &#8220;Michael Jackson did that &#8211; raised the bar &#8211; in his concert tours all of the time that is truly what I want to continue doing to honor him and his life.&#8221;
The creative team that put &#8220;Immortal&#8221; together was led by the show&#8217;s writer and director Jamie King, the mastermind behind tours and concert appearances by Madonna, Britney Spears, Rihanna, Celine Dion and Avril Lavigne.
&#8220;Immortal&#8221; is an ultimate Cirque du Soleil-Michael Jackson mashup.
Audiences will be surrounded by Cirque&#8217;s trademark quirky artistic sensibility complete with all the high-tech imagery and high flying, gravity defying, body contorting type of performers that are Cirque du Soleil&#8217;s bread and butter. Informing all of this is the iconic Jackson imagery &#8211; from glitter gloves and gangster fedoras to the infamous loafers and white socks &#8211; plus the choreography and music made famous by the entertainer known as the King of Pop, including actual tracks of Jackson&#8217;s voice backed by a live band that includes musicians who worked with Jackson.
Not just another Cirque show

&#8220;I have a team who all have the same vision &#8211; honoring Michael Jackson and celebrating his life. That&#8217;s why I say it&#8217;s an opportunity. It&#8217;s an opportunity to share that message,&#8221; Young said. &#8220;We have a very strong foundation and an authenticity and that really helps us and makes it a very rich experience. It&#8217;s not a one-dimensional experience at all.
&#8220;This is a feast of excellence from every single avenue &#8230; whether that&#8217;s through the choreography that you recognize or the trapeze artists in the air or the musicians or the technological elements. The video footage alone in our show is groundbreaking. It&#8217;s all so beautiful to watch.&#8221;
Young said the show deliberately avoided having someone actually impersonate Jackson. But the Cirque tradition of having the show follow a central character will, in this case, be seen through dancer-narrator Salah Benlemqawanssa, a French hip-hop dancer.
But Young said that&#8217;s really where comparisons to other Cirque shows ends.
&#8220;It&#8217;s not just another Cirque show. It&#8217;s really more of a rock concert combined with Cirque du Soleil. If you&#8217;re expecting to see a Cirque du Soleil show to Michael Jackson music, it&#8217;s more than that. It&#8217;s not just putting his music videos onstage,&#8221; she said. &#8220;It&#8217;s a rock concert experience in an arena. People get up and dance, they&#8217;re singing the songs, there&#8217;s a lot of emotion in the audience. It touches people in different ways.
 
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Trying to come down from my Immortal weekend, went to my 4th and 5th show and again, because of an adorable Immortal, I was able with my friends to go backstage, visit the arena, under the stage and even went on the scene after everybody left, walked all around it.

Then went to the hotel bar where Jonathan Moffett and many others of the cast (like adorable Fred White) were having a break, stayed with them until 1am, sigh, why do we need to sleep, why does it have to end :)

As for the show, many changes since October, of course no Giving Tree, but some numbers have changed, Ben is way shorter and much smaller with only some people on the B scene instead of having also people, tambourines and animals metallic structures on the A scene.

There is now a 20 min break in the middle, which wasn't there before. In Earth Song, the mime is no longer struggling with the suspended tree, I thought this part was so touching, I'm kinda sad it was removed. The lightning changed in You Are Not Alone intermission, The J5 number is now at the beginning which is way more logic and Bubbles, as good as he can be, doesn't show up at any moment, he comes 2 times and it's just enough. IJCSLY changed, aerials added, great, and we now have the REAL pole dancer, Felix and she is UNBELIEVABLY AMAZING! The backup pole dancer was very good, but this girl is really something, brilliant!

Now have to wait 2 months before they come back :)
sigh... Waking up this morning to go to work was..... annoying hahahaha :)

Huge Thanks to all those beautiful and adorable people working in this show!
 
http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/music/143974986.html

We saw the funeral. We saw the posthumous movie "This Is It." We saw the manslaughter trial of his doctor.

The King of Pop may be dead, but he is coming to an arena near you. "Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour" is the No. 1 tour in the music business right now, grossing more than $1 million a night -- doing bigger business per city than current outings by Kanye West/Jay-Z, Bob Seger and Brad Paisley.

Even though it's sort of a Michael Jackson concert without Michael, what Cirque du Soleil's "Immortal" -- which lands at Target Center Tuesday and Wednesday -- underscores is that Jackson remains immensely popular nearly three years after he overdosed.

"He was strangely reborn as a pop star with his death," said filmmaker and culture critic Nelson George, who has written two books on Jackson.

The pop icon certainly has been boffo box office of late. In October, when Forbes last calculated the income of dead musicians, Jackson was the runaway winner, having grossed $170 million in the previous year. Elvis Presley ranked second with a mere $55 million.

Since Jackson's death on June 25, 2009, at age 50, his estate has pulled in more than half a billion dollars, including $60 million upfront for the movie "This Is It" and $250 million for a 10-project record deal with Sony, according to Forbes.

"Michael is Elvis," said George. "In terms of iconography of cult Americana, Michael is replacing Elvis in so many different ways."

For one, Jackson is taking over for Presley in Las Vegas, where the rock 'n' roll king reigned for decades. Cirque du Soleil has announced the December closing of its "Viva Elvis" show after less than two years in Vegas and the opening of a resident production of "Immortal" there in 2013 to complement its Beatles' show, "Love," which opened in 2006, and the touring "Immortal."

Because he didn't tour in the United States between 1988 and his death, "Immortal" has become something of a surrogate Jackson tour.

"You cannot ever replace Michael," said Jackie Jackson, second oldest member of the Jackson 5.

But Jackie said that his brother always wanted to work with Cirque du Soleil so, of course, the Jacksons cooperated on "Immortal," which features Michael's voice on more than three dozen songs.

Directed and written by Jamie King -- Madonna's longtime collaborator -- the show doesn't follow a story arc, per se, but rather jumps around chronologically and features images of Jackson's career from his bejeweled glove to Bubbles the chimpanzee.

Big abroad

The 1990s were not kind to Jackson, especially in the States. To be sure, he scored hits, including the chart-topping "You Are Not Alone" and "Scream," a duet with his sister, Janet. But he was rocked by negative headlines, including allegations of child molestation, that made him a concert attraction non grata.

Except abroad. On two separate tours -- to support the "Dangerous" and "HIStory" albums -- he performed in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Oceania, South America and Mexico. The only U.S. venue was Hawaii. All the concerts were sold out.

"He's truly a global icon," said choreographer/dancer Travis Payne, who worked with Jackson from 1992 to 2009 and collaborated on "Immortal." "You could just feel a definite tonal shift in the way that he was perceived and received in all parts of the world."

After experiencing teen stardom with the Jackson 5 in the 1970s, Jackson became a solo sensation in the 1980s, peaking with "Thriller," which became the best-selling album of all time (29 million sold in the States alone) and led to a then-record seven Grammys.

"He came of age artistically at a time when his art could be presented in a multimedia way," said Joe Vogel, a Huffington Post critic who wrote the 2011 book "Man in the Music: The Creative Life and Work of Michael Jackson."

"We don't just hear the songs. There's the visual representation. There's the music videos. There's the dances. There's the iconography. There's the costumes. There's this whole web of things that we associate with Michael Jackson. People can relate to it in all those different ways. It's very multi-sensory."

It wasn't just those big-budget music videos with wow-inducing visual effects that hooked fans. While Elvis rocked and the Beatles made us sing along, Michael made us dance. He may have recorded more enduring dance tunes -- from the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back" to his own "Billie Jean" -- than any other pop figure.

Emil Campbell, who used to be a Jackson impersonator in a Las Vegas revue, still turns to Jackson songs with his popular Twin Cities show band the R Factor whenever he wants to be starting something on the dance floor.

"His music just makes you want to move," said Campbell, who has been performing Michael's music professionally for four decades.

But Michael didn't just do dance tunes.

"There's a depth and a range to his catalog," Vogel said. "He has ballads, he has protest songs, he has anthems, he has dance music. He did gospel, he did R&B, he did pop, he did hip-hop. It's not a traditional pop catalog where all the songs are love and relationships."

As inventive as his music may have been rhythmically and sonically, it was clearly mainstream and had mass appeal.

"It was clean and wholesome. It wasn't nasty music," explained singer Campbell. "You didn't have to worry about who is in the room. Your grandma could listen to it."

But what may have been the strongest magnet for Michael was the way he made you feel when he was onstage.

"He was the ultimate performer," said superfan Emily Clifford, 24, of Minneapolis, who regularly wears leather jackets like those her idol wore in the "Thriller" video and on the cover of his album "Bad."

Yes, he tried to be bad, but, as Clifford puts it, "he had the ability to have androgynous sex appeal that was both innocent and addicting." With that image, that dancing and 16 No. 1 songs, he became a demographic dream -- the first pop star to truly transcend race, genres, generations and geography in his appeal.

Dark side disappeared

Death obliterated the dark side of Jackson -- the child-abuse allegations, the plastic-surgery misadventures, the curious marriages -- and the masses focused on why we appreciated him in first place.

Released four months after his death, "This Is It" -- the highest-grossing concert movie ever, with $261 million -- was a crucial component in restoring his reputation. After years of his reclusiveness, the documentary showed the world what few had seen before: Michael as a person, his humanity and creativity in full view of the cameras. He taught moves to dancers, shared ideas with the show's director and created sounds with his mouth and fingers to instruct his musicians.

"He'd take as much time as was needed to get it right," choreographer Payne said of Jackson's creative process. "It was always about trying to top the last idea. That didn't necessarily mean bigger. It definitely meant different. It needed to have some surprise element. He wanted [the dancing] to be entertaining enough that it catches people's eye but simple enough that they want to get up and do it."

The movie chronicles the preparation for Jackson's ballyhooed comeback This Is It show -- 50 nights at London's O2 Arena in 2009-10 -- that never happened. Thus, for younger fans who never experienced Jackson in concert, this "Immortal" tour is it.

Matt Webster, 28, of Minneapolis, has a $175 ticket for Target Center. Actually, he had plans to see Jackson live for the first time in London three years ago.

"He was the coolest guy in the whole world," said Webster, who, at age 5 or 6, started break-dancing to his parents' cassette of the "Bad" album. "I was looking at paying $800 to scalpers for a This Is It ticket in London. Now, if you can't have Michael, you might as well have the most grandiose tribute to him. Cirque du Soleil is the one thing that can do him justice. I'm super-pumped."



King vs. King
Jackson's estate out-earned Elvis' by more than 3 to 1 last year, according to Forbes magazine, which ranked the top earners among dead pop stars:
1. Michael Jackson: $170 million

2. Elvis Presley: $55 million

3. John Lennon:$12 million

4. Jimi Hendrix: $7 million

5. George Harrison: $6 million
 
^ I liked Joe Vogel and a couple of other fan comments in that article but I didnt like the authors own commentary in that piece. What exactly is this "dark side that disappeared"? he never had a dark side and people still talk the same crap about him so none of that slander has disappeared.

But I can't wait to catch the show again this weekend....this time I got sears in the "6 o'clock" position :)
 
You guys a lucky person, you can watch it live in your country when i just can wacth it in the internet -_-. btw, i am a new member. Nice too meet you all. just keep michaeling ;). Thanks
 
Oh no, I knew this day would come. The MSG shows are next week and I'm regretting not getting a ticket. I'm debating whether it will be worth it to get a promenade seat (which is the best seats available, apparently). But I really don't want to miss this show. So who here has tickets for MSG and where are your seats?
 
I just saw a commercial for that Cirque thing tonight. As I was watching my local news. So it is coming to my area. And you know what I really don't care about it. Just seeing the commercial for it really hurt. I am crying now just by thinking about it. Because I see it as another stupid MJ tribute. That I will never waste my time of seeing.
 
Your choice :)

I'm very happy the show is doing that good, the people who are doing a very good work and I enjoy seeing the show, could see it over and over. I'll go again when they cme back here :)
 
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