By Nottingham Post | Posted: January 03, 2014
AS stage gaffes go, it was a special one. This was Cleo Higgins’s first week in the show Thriller Live and she walked on stage in her slippers. “I did all the dancing and singing but was scared that my slippers would fly off,” she laughs, remembering the performance at the end of last year, the beginning of a tour that comes to Nottingham this month.
“Luckily the audience didn’t seem to notice!” adds the 31-year-old from Birmingham, who enjoyed a brief pop career with her sisters Yonah and Zainam in the group Cleopatra during the late Nineties.
Thriller Live! is a two-and-a-half hour show that celebrates the music of Michael and the Jackson 5.
It has sold more than two million tickets worldwide and is now in its fifth year in the West End.
“I was nervous because they knew what I was about,” says Cleo of the audition process.
“I sang a bunch of Michael Jackson songs and there was a lot of ‘Michael does it like this’ and ‘can you sing it this way’.
“It was scary but I got the part so I don’t know what I was scared of.”
A move from pop to the theatre wasn’t one she expected to make when Cleopatra were enjoying Jackson’s singles like Cleopatra’s Theme, Life Ain’t Easy, I Want You Back and the US No. 1 A Touch of Love.
“I love theatre but I didn’t know the first thing about it,” she says.
“It’s a really good show to be in and I count my blessings.”
Despite that, it is hard work:
“The energy you have to bring performing the same show every night… I don’t know how we do it. And because it’s Michael Jackson, I can never get bored. I was brought up on his music and he is my biggest inspiration.”
The show features an array of greatest hits, including Billie Jean, Smooth Criminal, Dirty Diana, Earth Song and Thriller, with more than 20 musicians and dancers on stage, accompanied by video footage of Jackson.
“This man has touched so many souls,” she says of her hero.
“I didn’t believe it and I thought it was a joke when I was told he’d died. I cried every night for a year.
“As an artist, dancer and humanitarian, he was just incredible, so I couldn’t ask for a better job than this,” she says, adding that her favourite song to perform is They Don’t Care About Us.
Cleo was 13 when Cleopatra were signed to Madonna’s Maverick’s label. The group’s debut album, Comin Atcha, reached the Top 20 in 1998, which included a cover of The Jackson 5′s I Want You Back.
“We were supposed to meet Michael at Wembley Stadium in 1998 but we never got the chance,” she sighs.
“But we were having the time of our lives at the gig.”
The group split from the record label after the release of a second album but viewers of The Voice saw her attempt to revive a pop career last year.
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Source: nottinghampost / MJ-Upbeat.com
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Article: http://www.nottinghampost.com/Cleo-s-thrilled-singing-hero-s-songs/story-20397454-detail/story.html
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