“I am working hard to bring back something for the future but with the Vegas flavour that you can find only in Vegas,” he said in an email from his home in Belgium. He did not indicate where the show might be headed.
His comments were in response to my request to have Dragone address rumblings that he’s been involved in conceptual discussions for a Las Vegas production.
3 comments:
What is so exciting about Las Vegas productions is that the shear size of them is astounding! I am excited to hear that a new "showgirl" type show will be moving into Jubilee's old house. It is odd to think of something so modern and new moving into a space that inhabited a show that was conceived almost forty years ago. In reading this article I am weary of trying to break into the Las Vegas show market. It seems as if there is a monopoly on who directs what, over and over and over again. I wonder if these productions and new shows ever bring on board new talent, specifically in the design areas. Though I'm sure it gets tiring working in the Vegas style of production, however, it seems so exciting and glamorous. I cannot even imagine the amount of money that gets poured into the technical elements of these productions. After talking in class about the prices on costumes forty years ago and figuring in inflation, my mind was blown that ONE costume for a jubilee girl was almost $14,000 in today's money. I look forward to the day that I hopefully will have budgets similar to design costumes and scenery.
Like Broadway, it seems that with all of that money there is a lot of politics involved, and deciding on the space that the show goes up in is super important. I never factored that in when looking at shows in NY, but now I can imagine that the decision of where the show will live is imperative.
It's fantastic to hear that Cirque has more shows in the works. I keep up with their job listings as much as i can, and its quite clear when they're starting to develop something new as there are a flood of new job listings that have conspicuous 2 years+ contracts. Cirque is a critical part of getting people out and seeing live entertainment, especially with their impressive ability to get people to pay hundreds of dollars for tickets. While Las Vegas is definitely the most famous place in the U.S. for live entertainment, it's certainly a starting place to remind people to seek out live entertainment in their own cities. Also, in regards to their "one drop" initiative, it's fantastic to see them committed to philanthropy. The pictures from the party for one drop were so absolutely dazzling, in typical Cirque fashion.
Franco Dragone has an interesting history with Cirque Du Soleil and it is peculiar that the article mentions Cirque so many times despite the fact that to my knowledge Dragone no longer is a part of the Cirque Du Soleil team. I remember not long after Le Reve came up I was reading about why Dragone split and what drove him away from Cirque Du Soleil. Dragone was responsible for many of Cirque’s most successful productions including La Nouba, Mystere, and O. Interestingly enough, it is easy to find yourself in the path to talk about Dragone’s relationship with Cirque. Dragone’s own shows have been large, but have not received the same recognition as Cirque. Furthermore, the article does not make clear if the show is being produced by Cirque or not. In terms of Cirque’s actual happenings in this article, I think it is wonderful that Cirque over the past years has been establishing a way to reach out to those in needs, when their product is often considered a luxury.
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