Towards the end of Chapter Two of Fireworks and Other Illuminations, I sent William McGrath to Las Vegas. He is there for the private-investors event inaugurating the opening of a luxurious Japanese-themed casino hotel. I imagined it on the Strip out my love for Japan and its culture—echoing Regina’s trip in Chapter One. But also, because back during the aughts Vegas was a very important destination for me…
No, I don’t like gambling. And I definitely wouldn’t travel anywhere to do just that. It’s not the kind of thing that can induce an emotional high within my soul…
On the other hand an artistic performance… An inspirational feat that lets you enter other worlds… Worlds with extraordinary ambiance—where imagination takes flight with no restraint, where gravity dissolves, and human bodies rewrite physics… That’s a different matter altogether…
The way it started…
Back in the 90s my then-husband was a big fan of PBS’s arts, culture, history, and science programming. At the time, he found their shows edgier, darker, and more provocative than whatever he could find on other channels.
So, one evening I came from work—late as always—and he is on the living-room’s couch with our daughter… The way they were glued to that pre-HD TV… On the screen, a clownish kind of a guy was running around with a hoop, screaming. There was something unnerving, yet beguiling about it… I sat down and started watching too.
Ten minutes in, I asked, “What is this?” “Some kind of circus…” he said.
“This is not circus. It’s art…” was my reply.
That was 1999. Cirque du Soleil was young—only fifteen—but it wasn’t a baby either, as I quickly learned. They already produced ten (!!!) touring shows. Four of them were active. Mystère celebrated its fifth anniversary at Treasure Island. And they just took up residency at two more locations – Bellagio and Disney Springs… I immediately joined Cirque Club.
There was no doubt in my mind that I simply had to see this in person. To witness the creation of the artistic magic right in front of my eyes. To plunge myself into the poetic mystery of this uncanny combination of cerebral and emotionally stirring entertainment… Unfortunately, none of the touring shows were scheduled to be anywhere near NYC in the foreseeable future.
Well, if the mountain won’t come, etc. It was clear that I had to travel to a place where I was sure to find Cirque domiciled. And the arithmetics of it were a child’s play: there was a place where you could see two shows, not just one! Las Vegas was the answer.
The curveballs of evil
Well, it’s not that I could just jump on the plane and go… I think the last time I did that I was 20. My adult life wasn’t like that. Even my business travels were never really the spur-of-the-moment kind.
And at that particular time, the dot-com bubble was in full swing, throwing me professionally in the thick of internet start-ups and venture capitalists. Plus, I already had other vacation plans for 2000. So, it took a minute to coordinate a Vegas trip.
Those who read my Behind the Scenes: Japan post are already familiar with my system of advanced planning. Of course, Las Vegas is not Japan. It’s here, at home. Still, if you want to stay where you want to stay and see what you want to see from the best seats possible…Plus, this was my first trip to the Sin City. I had no clue whether I would ever visit it again.
So, sometime in March of 2001 I started making arrangements for early October—velvet season, you know. I got excellent tickets to both Mystère and O; and I booked Bellagio, and a car for a drive through Mojave Desert to the Hoover Dam, and the plane tickets; and I made a reservation at Le Cirque…
Six months later—on Tuesday, September 11—on the way to my office in Silicon Alley, I watched the pillars of smoke coming from somewhere definitely below Tribeca. And then I had to listen to my sixteen-year-old daughter—home with cold—crying through the landline, “Mom, there is no more tower… It just went down… Are you coming home?”
Keeping the faith
Tragedy of unimaginable magnitude has happened… Men and women I knew died. And some narrowly escaped. The nation was in shock… Panicking people everywhere were already talking about moving their businesses and lives out of the city. And it seemed that nobody wanted to fly anywhere anymore—the airline industry was literally spiraling out of control…
What was I to do?
My ex-husband and I were of the same mind. We do not let terrorists dictate our life choices! We are Americans for crying out loud! …And our daughter—to be left on her own in the house for the first time ever and, as it turned out, with her own secret agenda (think Weird Science)—didn’t raise any daughterly concerns…
And, yes, JFK was practically empty. And we got upgrades all around—the flight class, and the larger suite at Bellagio…
Yet, the most remarkable thing was: I’ve never experienced this level of patriotism in my whole life. Whenever we said we were from NYC—the emotions it generated around us… And when we were getting into Treasure Island for Mystère, Lee Greenwood’s voice was calling out to us through the loudspeakers with God Bless the USA. And everyone in the crowd joined in the refrain:
And I’m proud to be an American
Where at least I know I’m free
And I won’t forget the men who died
Who gave that right to me…
People forget… and times have changed.
Not surprisingly, the whimsical antics of the show’s wonderfully quirky creatures—exploring the existential mysteries—felt incredibly uplifting to me.
Only you…
But then… You may think that you adore Cirque du Soleil. Yet, you don’t know what you’re talking about until you’ve seen O.
That show! It’s mesmerizing…
I felt as if they conceived and crafted it just for me. Its inspired philosophy probes and ignites mysteries of Shakespearean magnitude. “The world is a stage” after all. The water and the air. The glories and the sorrows. Humans, demigods, and creatures of outer realms…
And with that come the endless questions—like the endless circle of O itself. What is our existence? What is Life? O, the brevity of everything and the passage of it all. And at the curtain call, what awaits us beyond? What happens to this soul, this mind, this intellect, this wit? “What dreams may come?” Here is a glimpse… “Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls—it tolls for you…”
And suddenly… the tragic Russian clowns appeared on a boat in the middle of the sea… Not just any Russian clowns, but the ones from—oh, so dear to me in their eccentricity—the Licedei Theater in the old capital of Russian tsars, where I was born…
I was forever bewitched…
Of course, in the somewhat altered reality of Fireworks and Other Illuminations, William is too young to be investing into Cirque du Soleil at its initial stages. Yet, I couldn’t help thinking of O when I was writing about his art philanthropy. It’s exactly the kind of a spectacle that he would fund without hesitation. And Las Vegas is a perfect place for testing the soul-awaking synergy he pursues. A tangible rendition of an imaginative act immersed into a thematic environment. The kind of a vision that encourages people to look up.
As time goes by…
Eventually both Allegría and Quidam passed through NYC—setting up the Grand Chapiteau in the Randall’s Island Park. We saw them both.
Then, the third show took residency in Vegas. Zumanity pushed Cirque’s artistic envelope further than ever before with the exploration of human sexuality. Its creators were keen on enriching the meditative inventiveness with edgy, daring, and beautifully alluring elements…
It was time to go back. The husband has become a veritable ex by then, and so in 2004 it was just my daughter and me. The Cirque pilgrimage—the first for her: O, Mystère, and now Zumanity… It felt almost ritualistic – returning to the place where these unique, un-touring shows reside…
We travelled a lot the next year. And amid all that journeying, we managed not only to visit La Nouba in its permanent home at Disney Springs, but also attend the premier of Corteo at the original Grand Chapiteau in Montreal. All are distinctive segments of my personal collage of Cirque du Soleil memories...
My last Vegas trip… so far
By the middle of 2006, you could go to Vegas and see five(!) Cirque du Soleil shows in one trip. In a rapid succession, the company added two more shows to the residential roster. Kà (2005)—the fiery coming-of-age story unfolding against the background of elaborately choreographed warfare. And The Beatles LOVE—a nostalgic stab at remembrance of times past with the cherished music reimagined in motion.
How could we miss that! And so, our 2006 Thanksgiving week was dedicated to the festival of Cirque. We were yearning to relive the enjoyment of the familiar spectacles and make acquaintance with the new ones…
It was such a letdown! The old shows looked somewhat tarnished. And the new ones failed to impress. Just heartbreaking!
Logically I understood what was happening. With thirteen touring and residential grand-scale productions, operating at the same time all over the world, they’ve stretched their resources too thin. I remember thinking that there are simply not enough olympic champions—or even piercingly original clowns—to cover such expansive needs.
And even more saddening, it felt that the imaginative powers of the creative team were being overextended to the level of… deficiency. The practical part of my brain grasped all that, but emotionally it felt like an unforgivable betrayal.
Well that’s life, isn’t it? I always say that I never went to Vegas to gamble… But when you keep chasing your emotional high, you are bound to lose at some point. Running after every opening of your favorite performance-art spectacle—or the musician your idolize, or a play you dreamt to see—it’s a gamble after all.
And so—in spite of Bellagio’s Cypress Suite and all the fabulous shopping—the whole experience ended up to be… How shall I put it? Unsatisfactory. That definitely wasn’t why I went to Las Vegas.
That was my last trip… But it’s okay. I have my cherished memories as well as the tangible aides-memoire: the lavish programs, and the folio albums, and the little souvenirs.
Yet, O…
I must say, though, O… it never failed me… I went to see it every time I was in Vegas—to test its limitless capacity to enthrall. And invariably it had the most profound effect on me. Even at the somewhat diminished quality of the performance…
And to this day, I still miss it from time to time… The surreal magic and the painful realism of it—simultaneously tragic and uplifting… It’s still there, you know—the Bellagio’s anchor…
It’s the reason why, at the very end of Chapter Two, I make William look at the Bellagio’s giant billboard displaying O‘s famous poster and envision it coming to life with the virtual reality tools he is about to unleash… The engineered phantasy in immersive environment—so very Cirque du Soleil, so very William McGrath…
Interested to find out what else happens to William in Chapter Two of Fireworks and Other Illuminations, read it here–>Enter William McGrath
Note: All Cirque photos are mine—shot from the pages of numerous official programs, brochures, and books I have from Cirque du Soleil shows mentioned above.
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