Las Vegas Weekly

November 1, 2008 · 9:55 AM

Believe’s Angel living the dream in Vegas

By Robin Leach

Criss Angel shows off the necklace given to him by Felix Rappaport.

Photo: TVT

Sneak Peak at Believe

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Excerpts from Friday's press conference for Criss Angel’s Believe, the $100 million Cirque du Soleil extravaganza that had its world premiere tonight at Luxor. Angel speaks:

I’m living the dream: “First I want to thank everybody for attending this afternoon, we very much appreciate your presence here. Many, many years ago, I had the opportunity to watch Cirque in one of the first of their TV productions, and I was in awe of the artistry, the poetry, the emotion provoked from an art form that really possessed the previous Cirque, that magic of emotion without even doing an illusion. And my dream was to do what Cirque did, try to reinvent deception or how you have the public think about magic as Cirque did for the circus.”

“And when I made my first move to Las Vegas, I remember, and I tell this story all the time, I stayed at this hotel that was like $49 and I had about $300 in my pocket. And I remember being in this same theater sitting right up there and watching a show here by the Blue Man Group and then going down the Strip and seeing the billboards of Siegfried & Roy and watching those. I don’t know how many times, about 15 times, it was my favorite show, well my second favorite show now.”

“But, I had a big dream, and I always remember what my father told me, there is nothing in life that you can’t achieve if you work for it, and that, and that’s exactly what I did. I pretty much sacrificed my childhood, everything, for this dream. And 15 years ago, I dreamt it, and today I’m living the dream and it just goes to show you that anybody can live their dream if you believe, and it’s not a line, it’s really what I believe.”

“I’m just very, very grateful to A&E for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime because, honestly, this is beyond my dreams. To work with an incredible organization like Cirque, who is at the pinnacle of entertainment, who has redefined entertainment. And I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished in this show Believe.”

A new challenge: “To transfer from television to live was very easy for me because that’s where I come from. I’m a creature of a live performance more than television. I’ve been doing that since I was a kid, and actually did about 600 performances on Broadway and 43rd Street.”

“I think for me, speaking from my perspective, the biggest challenge was that we wanted to present. There’s only X-amount of things you can do with magic. You can make something appear, you can make something vanish, you can make something levitate, and you can cut it and put it back together. Those are the physics of nature, that’s what you can do. And what I wanted to do is to present those concepts in a way that has never been presented on a stage before. I wanted to get rid of the typical presentation that would be associated with those things and present the most sophisticated version of cutting a human in half. Without any volatiles, without any flaws and give people a presentation that had the illusion woven into the fabric.”

“So the greatest challenge was how do you do that? How do you take something and have it in the open. Well then it has to be involved in other art forms, the costumes, the lighting, the special effects, there are so many other things that seamlessly have to work together in order to pull that off. And it was a long period of time that we had to trial and error and do garbage bag tests in order to figure out if it was even possible because it’s never been done before. And for us that was incredibly challenging, so we’re happy to have made it through that process.”

From TV to stage: “The TV show of nearly 100 episodes has really allowed me to explore a lot of diverse illusions and things. But there is a whole other side to me as I’m sure many artists have, and I really wanted to go there. The success of the TV show and the fans have really given me the platform to do this show, to try something. It’s very easy to stay inside the box and do what works, but to try to do what hasn’t been done and to push your own envelope as an artist and be the best you can be? Because to the day I die, I want to learn and I want to grow. And Cirque has given me that opportunity to do that.”

“And so for me it’s about showing people that there is more to me than just the Mindfreak thing, and for people around me know that I have a lot of areas that I want to explore as an artist. Because doing the same thing, it kind of gets a little boring, and I’m interested in being the best I can be as an artist.”

The magic begins: “I learned my first magic trick when I was 7 years old from my Aunt Stella, who is going to be at the show tonight. When I was about 11 or 12, I started performing my first shows. Started at birthday parties and moved on to Sweet 16s and then corporate events and then when I was 14 I was performing in bars and clubs, riding my bicycle to work.”

Back to childhood: “Everybody has an inner child that lives inside of us but some of choose to let it out, and some of us choose not to show it. It’s a wonderful feeling when you have that wonderment. You feel like a child again.”

From start to finish: “Well 15 years ago, I originally wrote the show, but when I heard Cirque was getting involved, I thought, well, OK, now we’re going to rewrite the whole thing because now the opportunity, the poetry, Cirque just took it to a whole other level. And yesterday we were evolving and developing the show, and it probably will until the day we die with this show.”

*A reminder to check out our new Vegas celebrity news Web site and home to Luxe Life, VegasDeluxe.com.

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