Las Vegas Weekly

December 22, 2009 · 3:07 PM

Viva Elvis Part 2: Creative director reveals a few secrets

By Robin Leach

Cirque du Soleil gives a sneak preview of Viva Elvis at CityCenter's Aria Resort & Casino on Dec. 15, 2009.

Photo: Brian Jones/Las Vegas News Bureau

Even when the new show Viva Elvis was just a germ of an idea nearly four years ago, Gilles Ste-Croix, Cirque du Soleil’s creative director, had a single goal. Right from the start, he wanted the production to be what Elvis would want if he was alive today in 2010.

“I said if Elvis lived, how would he want his arrangements, how would he want his music done, how would he want his theater to be for his fans, and how would he want it all staged and presented,” Gilles told me in a sit-down interview.

“So this is a concert. Not a traditional Cirque show. We have other shows in Vegas if you want the circus. This show’s acrobatic elements, set designs and other artistic components are part of an overall creative vision designed to showcase the timeless music of Elvis, his unique voice and unequaled talent as a performer.”

It was more than 50 years ago that Elvis turned the world on its musical ear and became a phenomenon and ultimately a legend. Cirque wanted to capture that, so it had to present a show different from its previous productions.

Unlike Zumanity and Love, this is no theater in the round. Unlike O, there is no deep-water diving pool. Unlike Ka, there are no high wire, death-defying stunt acrobatics. However, Viva Elvis does use other Cirque strengths to tell the amazing story of the King of Rock and Roll.

Gilles said the stage at Aria in CityCenter is the largest theater Cirque has built here. The wide stage, backstage and side wings are huge, and the conventional proscenium reminds of the Phantom -- the Las Vegas Spectacular theater at The Venetian, although much larger.

The center of the Elvis stage is made up of 187 platforms that split into eight sections to rise up 10 feet tall. Some 35 feet below the stage, there are four powerful motors that propel the 18-foot-by-80-foot widest platform upward. The set alone for “Gotta Lot of Living to Do” weighs 30 tons and uses the full 80-foot width of the stage. The 16-feet-deep and 25-feet-tall structure uses seven trampolines, and the Cirque design team installed it because of Elvis’ love for fairgrounds, which he visited many times after hours with friends when he would buy them out privately to avoid mobs of fans.

The “Jailhouse Rock” set is another modern technical marvel. It’s large enough for 30 artists, but I’ll never reveal the secret of how the dancers perform right side up and the acrobats walk upside down simultaneously! There is even a gigantic blue suede shoe that weighs 1,500 pounds and measures nearly 30 feet. Many of the props, including the barber chair, film projector and rotary phones, are authentic antiques from Graceland that have been lovingly restored.

Here are highlights of my interview with Gilles:

Gilles Ste-Croix: Everyone will know Elvis is back, so there is no way that we could have presented this other than in a very humble way because Elvis was so big, and he was so big in Vegas, as well. As entertainers, we can only pay tribute to Elvis. To approach Elvis as a theme of the show, you really realize he was a very generous man. He was a man that gave -- as a man, as a father, as a friend, and as an entertainer, he gave to his fans.

Photo: Scott Harrison/Retna/www.harrisonphotos.com

Priscilla Presley and Cirque du Soleil unveil Viva Elvis at Aria in CityCenter on Dec. 15, 2009.

So for all the fans that will come see this, it was very important for us to be just in what we present about Elvis. So we tried to see it through his eyes, what would Elvis ask today of his musicians. What would he ask the architect about this theater, how do you like it, and so we went to Graceland, we went and saw all the movies, we went and listened to the music, we spoke to Priscilla (Presley), we spoke to friends to pick up what was the most precise image we could get of Elvis. We really wanted to convey Elvis as just as possible. So Elvis at the end of the show that you feel Elvis as we have felt it in our development of this show. It was a hard journey because we took a road sometimes that broke and that we had to change completely.

Robin Leach: So it’s completely different from what we expect a Cirque show to be. It’s a jumping, jiving, dancing, sing-along, supersized Vegas spectacular from his time?

GS: It’s a concert. It is music. So we went fresh. We found a new arranger, and the composition of the band is pretty much what he wanted. If you look into the horn and guitar section, it is very rock and roll, and that brought freshness to his music and to Cirque. This really is like a concert in a theater that could present opera because the stage is so huge. This is definitely the biggest we’ve done, and we have some incredible surprises and spectacles planned when we premiere on Feb. 19. Between now and then, we are in previews, making changes, adding some things and taking others away based on the audience reactions. That’s a very important part of our creative process.

We aren’t doing a Cirque show! We are doing an Elvis show, so everything is connected to him. We talk about the man, the artist, the father, the husband and the patriot, and this is what the show is about. This fantastic, larger-than-life man.

RL: Priscilla said she wept the first time and she said today she cried. The important thing I thought she said today is that Elvis would be proud of the show.

Photo: Tom Donoghue/www.donoghuephotography.com

Cirque du Soleil gives a sneak preview of Viva Elvis at CityCenter's Aria Resort & Casino on Dec. 15, 2009.

GS: When you create something over a three-year span, you have to keep that in mind all the time you are doing it. We got the music, the score, and then we had to deal with the way the story was told. So we played around with the idea that we could even have Elvis in the representation there and even an actor speaking to the crowd. We tried that, but it didn’t work. It was too much of a play in a Broadway direction. We had his music and we had his dance, and then we had some characters speaking, and we said, no, that’s not why people come to Vegas. They come to Vegas to see a spectacular about Elvis, and so we let them go.

But we decided to keep the actor playing Col. Tom Parker because no one really knows him and yet he was the most important part of Elvis’ success. I checked with Priscilla and asked her, “Do you feel comfortable with this?” And we played it with her, and she said Parker was more humble than this. He was not bragging so much, and he really supported Elvis and everything he wanted to do. He was not an artist; he was a businessman. So he wanted Elvis to succeed.

RL: In the creative process for Elvis, was this the easiest of all the six other Vegas shows -- or the toughest?

GS: There are none that are easy, and I think this is the toughest. It’s not over yet, so I do not know. It’s funny because I had the same time that I had during Love with Yoko (Ono) and Olivia (Harrison). They are protecting their husband or the legacy of their man, and Olivia had questions about a scene we were doing and she said I am not sure if George (Harrison) would have liked this. And I said why and she said this character doesn’t fit with the story, and I said well this character helps us to go into the story of the song. And she would say yes, well, I will look at it again, and it’s because she was protecting George, and so Priscilla is doing the same.

RL: It is good that they have meaningful impact. I must ask you a couple of corporate Cirque questions. Seven shows now on the strip. Do you stop here or do you keep going?

Photo: Tom Donoghue/www.donoghuephotography.com

Junior Case as Col. Tom Parker at Cirque du Soleil's Viva Elvis at Aria in CityCenter on Dec. 15, 2009.

GS: You know when they came to see us, they said we love what you did with The Beatles. They asked us for our take on Elvis in Vegas. We had to evaluate if we were doing it because we already had six shows, but Guy Laliberte said if we don’t do it, they will have someone else. So we have a good partner in MGM, and if Bobby Baldwin says he wants the show, then we will do it. So when does it become too much? Well, I don’t know! The opportunity was there, and I am very happy that we did Love, and I am very happy we are doing Viva Elvis.

When we did Love, you know, when I was 12, I wanted to have a bass and I wanted to be (Paul) McCartney. My father didn’t want me to do that. Now that I am 50, I ended up sitting and talking with McCartney about his music and doing his show. I said after opening Love, what do you do after this? I said this is the achievement as my life as an artist, and then ding, ding, ding, do you want to do a show about Elvis? When do you stop? I love doing shows, and the challenge and creativity comes with people where new ideas emerge, so I don’t think this is the end story. I think this town allows us to do these things.

RL: So when new opportunities arise, you won’t say no?

GS: Well, we always evaluate. But at one point, I'm not going to live forever.

RL: Criss (Angel) tells me he is adding seven new illusions to Believe between now and March.

Photo: Tomasz Rossa/Cirque du Soleil

Criss Angel performs in his Cirque du Soleil show Believe at the Luxor.

GS: Well, he has already started, and we are going to do a press event around that. This is part of the evolution of his show, definitely. Some people say it’s a work in progress, but when you play with something new like magic, you realize at one point, maybe you went the wrong way, and you have to adapt to the fact that Criss was a persona and star himself. We shouldn’t have been so Cirque with him. That didn’t work very well because he is Criss. So we said we have Criss, so we should be adding more Criss rather than acrobatics, thus more magic. We have developed a beautiful relationship with Criss, and we are working intensively adding magic. When I went a month ago to see the new illusions, I even said wow.

RL: So you won’t call it a relaunch -- you just call this a natural progression?

GS: You know so many things have changed in one year that you keep adding to it and keep growing. You remember Zumanity when we first opened? It was pretentious. It is now so much more fun, like sex is fun. So we listened to the crowd and listened to the people who said this is boring, what we are doing here, so we changed it. Now it’s a party place.

To get an idea of how diligent Cirque has been with Viva Elvis, Ivan Dudynsky, who is the designer of the image content, looked through 60,000 Elvis photographs, 30 movies, 15 documentaries, 10 concerts and all of Elvis’ home movies to create the graphic design elements for the show.

Photo: Tom Donoghue/www.donoghuephotography.com

Cirque du Soleil gives a sneak preview of Viva Elvis at CityCenter's Aria Resort & Casino on Dec. 15, 2009.

Before Gilles and I stopped chatting, I told him I thought audiences would love the large, comfortable seating in the theater, with sufficient room to dance right at their seats to the Elvis songs and music.

He summed up, laughing: “It will help people to get up and have room to dance, so we really designed the seating specifically for this place. It’s going to be great for people who have large hips.”

Our four-part series continues tomorrow with a fascinating one-on-one interview with director and author Vincent Paterson. We posted Part 1, with Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte and Priscilla, here at Vegas DeLuxe yesterday.

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

Follow Robin Leach on Twitter HERE.

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Follow VDLX Editor Don Chareunsy on Twitter HERE.

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