by Tom Norton
Last month at the DWTC, the Cirque du Soleil met Michael Jackson in a marriage of the surreal and spectacular alike for the Dubai debut of The Immortal World Tour, staged by Duvent. Sound & Stage chats to production designer Andy Omilinaowski about putting on the best Thriller possible …
With over 400 shows in over 120 cities across the planet - it was with a tangible degree of anticipation that Cirque du Soleil’s much lauded Michael Jackson’s Immortal World Tour moonwalked its merry way into the UAE at the end of last year.
The musical legacy left by the King of Pop means that any production utilising the famous Michael Jackson moniker renders itself open to a heightened level of both professional and critical scrutiny – a fact that theatrical virtuosos Cirque are well aware of, shaping a bespoke show over two years that has been one of the biggest selling theatrical productions ever.
“This show is more like a rock ‘n’ roll show, rather than a theatrical production or typical Cirque musical as far as the way we portray and operate it,” enthuses Andy Omilinaowski, long-running production designer for the Cirque Immortal World Tour.
“The whole arena touring side is still fairly new to Cirque, they have the resident shows – like the Las Vegas shows – you have the big top shows; which are more circus style and then you have the arena shows like us.”
Indeed, whilst The Immortal Tour does feature a peppering of acrobatic flair and a sprinkling of audacious aerial feats – the show’s core is certainly a choreographic one, with – as Omilinaowski attests – a pervasive rock ‘n’ roll theme throughout. Less circus, more choreographed cool.
“The MJ tour still has the acrobatic elements but it’s a lot more dance orientated based on his career as a dancer and his life,” adds Omilinaowski.
Having both taken a whirlwind tour backstage, and witnessed the hugely impressive finished production – we make no exaggeration in claiming that the scale of the show - both from a technical perspective and a production one – is up there with the biggest Sound & Stage has ever seen, localised to one arena.
To put it in some sense of context, Omilinaowski informs us that the show travels with no less than 40 ocean freight containers, packaging all manner of props, rigging, costumes and set designs.
“The show itself is totally self contained, everything you see in there - the staging, the light, the sound, the video – everything travels with us,” adds the production designer with a wry smile.
“There’s really no other 40 truck arena sized shows out there – so it’s very expensive and it really takes a lot of planning to be able to fit that volume of gear into one place – it certainly isn’t easy.”
Despite his professions as to the productional difficulty of setting up such a large scale show, it would seem that Omilinaowski and his (approximately) 51-strong technical team have got this wholly expansive set-up and deconstruct down to an absolute science – citing a build time of around 10 hours, book-ended by a staggeringly quick load-out of just three hours.
“We can do this show in one day if we had too,” states Omilinaowski frankly.
“Back in America with standard rock ‘n’ roll trucks, with experienced stage hands and technicians, we can get it loaded out in less than two hours. Our record is one hour 58 minutes! Though that was in France I think and everything just went perfectly…”
Having toured around everywhere from your typical theatres to ice hockey arenas, to basketball courts and convention centres like the DWTC– Sound & Stage was interested in finding out how the production was tailored to fit with the individual setup in each of these varying establishments.
“The way it differs is venue specific yeah,” admits Omilinaowski. “What version of the show we put on naturally depends on the size of the arena. For example, in a lower arena, how high the roof is has an impact on what sort of acrobatic elements we can do. But we always put on the full show, with perhaps slight variations on the content given the space we have.”
With precisely this very productional aspect of the show in mind, how does the scale and difficulty of the Trade Centre Arena at the DWTC compare in Omilinaowski’s eyes?
“It’s not the best scenario but it’s not the worst! It’s somewhere in the middle, just because once again we’re coming in and out of containers which is a little more difficult and takes a little more time,” adds the incredibly patient sounding production designer.
“There’s no loading docks, everything had to come out via forklifts and ramps. But the venue has plenty of space which is great, and we have the hall behind us we can utilise.”
The particular make up of the Trade Centre Arena also meant certain acts a had to be - in Andy’s words - “abbreviated”, not that an audience would have noticed however.
“The trim is very low here you see, it’s 45 feet, 16 odd metres, so that’s about twenty feet lower than we’d like it to be. In a perfect scenario if we can 18/19 metres we’re in our A-mode, anything lower than that we have to make changes,” Omilinaowski continues, indicating the space around us.
“The rigging is a little bit tricky, as you’ll find in most convention centres. Your riggers cannot climb up into the roof and hang the show, you have to bring in bucket trucks where you put in a couple of people in the man-lift and then send it up to the roof to hang the points. So that was a little bit difficult.”
Read More: http://www.digitalproductionme.com/article-7142-peering-into-neverland/3/#.UxdH0uso6Uk
Source: digitalproductionme / MJ-Upbeat.com
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