Cirque du Soleil's "Viva ELVIS" at new ARIA Resort & Casino in Las Vegas pays musical tribute

Viva, Elvis by Cirque du Soleil at Aria Resort in Las Vegas/Photo: Julia Aucoin/Costumes: Stefano Canulli

The contemporary Las Vegas experience in one new resort, ARIA Resort & Casino features Cirque du Soleil’s new Viva ELVIS (Part One: Viva ELVIS. Part Two coming up: ARIA Resort & Casino and Virgin America.) Slideshow of Viva ELVIS below with a slideshow of the new Elvis theater and of ARIA in part two.

Part One: Viva ELVIS

There’s something for every Elvis fan in the seventh permanent Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas, aptly named Viva ELVIS. This cavalcade of Elvis hits delivers with everything it’s got, ranging from raucous abandon of dancers to synchronized precision of the trampoline and aerial athletes, all often kept in time to a heavy drum beat. Whether you prefer Southern gospel, the army years, the movie star years from Jailhouse Rock to the westerns; or the Las Vegas years, the show puts a new energy into the classics which the artists perform in the songs’ entirety; It’s not a montage of excerpts.

Costumes by Stefano Canulli

Stefano Canulli’s American 1950s and 60s costume design compliments the dancers and athletes so beautifully and with such fun and spirit the costumes should be a show unto themselves. While the show’s reinterpretations at times may border on parody it is a high spirited youthful extravaganza Las Vegas style and the music at the heart of the show manages to remain truly Elvis.

Sets by Mark Fisher

What’s new is that you may learn something about the man himself as the show puts personal details about the King upfront, such as his love of Marvel comics, for example. Writer, director Paterson presents the trampoline ensemble as super heroes bouncing off of the walls in a perfectly timed frenzy of crime fighting. Note designer Mark Fisher’s set for the Got A Lot of Livin’ To Do features seven trampolines and the whole structure was inspired by Elvis' love of fairgrounds, which he would visit with his friends after hours.

Emotions run from the elated and energizing to the surprisingly touching and charismatic to the spiritual to the almost mandatory comic take on Elvis impersonators.

Magically Elvis’ real life twin Jesse who died at birth, comes to life for just one dreamy night. Two matching gymnasts swing and slide through the bars of a guitar suspended high above the stage in the Heavens. Acrobats Michael MacNamara and Remi Bakkar.

Women sing at the forefront

Women Black or White perform Elvis’ songs from the gospel roots to the ballads while Elvis remains the only male voice. Women sing and play piano or guitar on stage while the men full of stamina keep a strong and driving beat throughout, sometimes on two drum sets. The singers are: Toscha Comeaux (All Shook Up), Sherry St. Germain (One Night with You), Jennlee Shallow (King Creole) and Dea Norberg (Love Me Tender).

Ten year contracts

Each Cirque show that gets a contract in Las Vegas as a permanent show has a ten year run planned. Mystere is sixteen; “O” is eleven. What’s different about Viva ELVIS would be the strong American element with thirty dancers joining the gymnasts and European circus performers of Cirque du Soleil. Some dancers come from Celine Dion’s show after it closed. Twenty nationalities make up the Viva ELVIS show.

Couched in a new opera style theater

They start the show by parading down the aisles of the theater. It’s a long jaunt as this is a huge theater, in the style of opera houses with high sweeping balconies and a large stage so high it seems to disappear into the night sky. The Elvis theater seats however have a couch design complete with upholstered arm rests along with plenty of leg room. It added to the comfort and enjoyment considerably as well as enabling couples to sit intimately. They were like upholstered pews if you will, with cup holders mounted in the backs of the seats.

One of the opening numbers, Blue Suede Shoes, involves a huge blue suede shoe that’s 29 feet long with a slide down the interior and an exterior from which gymnasts swung on ropes. The original shoe was 1500 pounds. During the show’s creative process, it was determined that the shoe should be more of an acrobatic apparatus so they built a second shoe. That one weighs in at seven thousand pounds.

The band comes on stage for Don’t Be Cruel with two drums and a bass. Dresses look like swirls of candy or ice-cream flavors.

As this is a new theater perhaps that explains one gremlin in the house which resulted in about a twenty minute delay before One Night with You, one of the more touching numbers with two gymnasts performing on a guitar rig of aluminum bars suspended high above the stage. Everybody in the audience sat politely and time passed quickly as about three separate announcements were made about the technical difficulty. Something was wrong with one of the 17 lifts but it was fixed before the nine o’clock show.

High tech to antique

Some features are not high tech by today’s standards but are antiques, like the real barber chair. A good portion of the show was dedicated to the army years. One features the women in airmail envelopes, real paper dresses. Love Me Tender came with army video. Some may like the vintage real footage or home movies; others may want the live entertainment they paid for. Perhaps it depends on how much of an Elvis fan you are.

A new trend: musical tributes from the Beatles to Elvis to Michael Jackson

This is a Las Vegas rendition and while some may prefer the predominant athleticism and physical artistry of traditional Cirque du Soleil, isn’t there room for musical tribute? It seems to be a new trend that started with the Beatles “Love” show and will continue with the Michael Jackson tribute in 2011. These musical tributes represent a new development but they do not replace traditional Cirque so there’s room for everybody.

A more traditional Cirque show in a tent would be Ovo, which toured San Francisco this year.

For more information click here: Ovo's microcosmic world backstageg with Spiderwoman and LadyBug

Ovo promises world of ladybug love and biodiversity.

Ovo evokes color, sound, audaciousness of Brazil

In any event the army years continue with Return to Sender and the droll long john and boxer set, the underwear forming an American flag. There are only 48 pairs of boxers as that’s how many states existed when Elvis was in the army. The year was 1958 and Alaska and Hawaii had not yet been admitted.

The number featured a series of rolloffs as we used to call them in cheerleading days, where each dancer begins the movement on the beat following. It worked well with the marching band style, regimented with heavy drum beats. Lonesome Tonight though turned tender with an aerial pas de deux and the soldier holding a letter.

The western sequence had a sense of whimsy and fun as the band played a washboard and harmonica on stage. The costumes here were particularly fun with appaloosa and pinto print tutus. Blue Moon featured lassos.

Burning Love featured outtakes of all the girls Elvis gave screen kisses to, including Anne Margaret.
A hand-balancer stacked a tower of chairs at a party and topped it off with a bottle of champagne. The hand balancer goes by Rokardy (last name Rodriguez).

King Creole took on a tough edge from the alleys of the French Quarter in New Orleans. The womens’ costumes again were captivating with a 60s high couture look reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly, although the look isn't intended to be retro per se.

Marche Inversee

Jailhouse Rock meant black and white though and no uptown girls. Gymnasts swung and spun upside down while sliding along underneath the jailhouse catwalks. Designer Mark Fisher based his new design on the technical requirements for a circus art called “marche inversée.” The structure incorporates ten tracks for acrobats to walk upside down, attached by their feet, while dancers perform right side up on other levels.

Now or Never featured mirror image pairs of female dancers in glittering bikinis and long pony tails, seducing young men in black leather, all to an intense Flamenco guitar. However this segued into the big wedding scene with a replica of Elvis and Priscilla’s actual wedding cake. Dancers emerged in tuxedos and comically graceful roller skates. The sequence evolved into Can’t Help Falling in Love with You as mirror balls spun. Oversized wedding rings descended each with a sexy pair of brides and grooms on their wedding night. The audience finally hooted after remaining relatively sedate all evening and the show picking up the tempo with Viva, Las Vegas as the wedding beds descend below the stage.

Suspicious Minds involved an intense couple in a pas de deux where the dancers actually had to trust each other one hundred percent considering the tumultuous moves. This is the one point in the show that actually gave me goosebumps. The Suspicious Minds couple are Katja Kortstrom and Mattias Andersson.

Hound Dog followed with aerial acrobats dangling and twisting vibrantly on sexy red aerial silks leading to a surprise for the audience.

In general while some of the numbers like the big finale with Japanese style pompadour molds bordered on parody rather than tribute, Elvis as a muse can do no wrong and the show originating in Montreal as they all do has a solid foundation in American culture even with a French Canadian twist. This is Cirque du Soleil perhaps making fun of itself for going so Vegas over the last couple of decades and joining the global economy as a commercial force of global citizens. Nevertheless Viva ELVIS underneath is still classic Cirque du Soleil with it’s European style and sophistication, death defying aerial acts and glorious costumes. Kind of the way Las Vegas Elvis came from a southern boy with gospel roots.

Tickets to Viva Elvis usually run $99 to $175 but Cirque offers summer discounts with tickets at $50.
Rooms at ARIA Resort & Casino begin at $129 via the internet. ARIA offers an introductory special.

For more information:http://www.arialasvegas.com/
http://www.virginamerica.com/va/home.do
http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/shows/viva-elvis/default.aspx

Icons on stage, tributes to satires

London's "Peter Pan" debuts at ferry park in SF with state of the art theater in the round

"The Tosca Project" world premiere at ACT-SF a Valentine with Molat and Feijoo

Round and Round the Garden, British farce opened at ACT

Beauty and the Beast Broadway musical comes to SF summer 2010

For more articles by this writer, check out the San Francisco opera column: http://www.examiner.com/x-2366-SF-Opera-Examiner

SF Opera presents Charles Francois Guonod's Faust with Secco, Racette, Relyea

Tales of Hoffman sells out in a good not bourgeois way

Anna Nicole and subject of celebrity a worthy one (Covent Garden 2011)

Anna Nicole Smith weapon of mass distraction

The bourgeoisie and thwarting love