The athleticism and gymnastics are extraordinary. The agility is more than amazing. The computer technology and machinery to bring Cirque du Soleil’s “Ka” to life twice nightly at MGM Grand are exceptional. It’s all about fearless courage and tenacity in a unique family of performing artists. They’ve been defying the laws of gravity for 10 years and are still climbing. Tonight is the start of the 10th anniversary celebration shows, and it’s good to take a look back at the spectacular that still has audiences confounded and wondering if what they saw was real.
One tragic incident during “Ka’s” decade-long run at MGM Grand led Cirque officials to delete the final Epic Battle Scene, but it was restored in early December. On June 29, 2013, acrobat Sarah Guillot-Guyard plunged 90 feet off the rising vertical wall to her death after her safety cable was cut in a winch. It was the first onstage accident resulting in death in Cirque’s 30-year history. Shows were put on hold for about a month, and the battle scene was replaced with an alternative sequence and then a previous video projection of the act. It took nearly 18 months and more than $500,000 for Cirque performers and executives to feel confident and comfortable about reintroducing the scene that reached the climatic finale.
My interview with senior Cirque exec Calum Peterson, who was candid about the circumstances that led to Sarah’s death, how a similar disaster could never happen again and why the scene was reintroduced to the show two months ago, was posted on Dec. 7. It’s still as dangerous as it looks, even more so than the Wheel of Death, which I’ve always thought of as the most dangerous act in any show. “It is highly dangerous,” Calum explained to me. “It requires a lot of the human body. The training that goes into the athlete’s core building this act is intense. It takes months of strength training.”
“Ka” premiered on Feb. 3, 2005, after previews that began Nov. 26, 2004. I remember the premiere night well as everybody in the glittering audience were open-mouthed at the spectacle — the show and theater had cost nearly $200 million to develop. It was hailed as a “masterpiece of theater” and a “unique entertainment of the first order.”
The theater seats 1,950 people at each performance in the 16 seating zones who find a pair of speakers at ear level in every seat. Hundreds more are installed in the auditorium — in all 4,774 loud speakers in 2,139 cabinets. Instead of a conventional stage with a permanent floor, there are two giant moving platforms and five smaller ones that seemed to float through a bottomless space. The height of the high grid is 98 feet above the stage and the drop to the lowest floor level is 51 feet from the audience, a mind-numbing 15 stories in height from top to bottom with computers controlling the movable platforms. The unique floating stages won “Ka” the Thea Award for Outstanding Technical Achievement in 2008 from the Themed Entertainment Association.
One of the highlights of the production is the Sand Cliff Deck, which a vertical gantry crane controls rotating it 360 degrees, tilting it from flat to 100 degrees and lifting up and down 72 feet. The performers use 80 “rod-actuators” that sprout from the floor surface to assist their climbing vertically. It turns into a beach with the entire deck covered with 350 cubic feet of imported granular cork from Portugal. That’s one ton of cleaned cork hydrated to specific conditions for every performance. The cast members inside the human-sized puppets are buried within the cork and then revealed to mimic giant sea creatures, including a mischievous starfish and playful crab.
Since “Ka” opened, more than 130,000 pounds of cork have been used. During the run of the show, 1,586 Spearman/Spearwoman unitards and 243 wigs have been used. The cast has worn out 7,421 makeup brushes since opening night. Just what does “Ka” mean? Its title is inspired by the ancient Egyptian belief that an invisible, spiritual duplicate of the body accompanies every human being throughout this life and into the next. Eighty phenomenally physiqued individuals make up the team of onstage artists and performers with backup from 220 others, including technicians and support staff on the production team. Amazingly, about 30 percent of the staff and one-third of the performing artists have been with the show since Day 1. They celebrated 4,000 shows in 2013.
Happy 10th anniversary! It’s truly a remarkable achievement and another only-in-Las-Vegas experience.
{ SOURCE: Las Vegas Sun | http://goo.gl/ZkFm1L }
