Sunday, June 06, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

MIKE WEATHERFORD: Top acts now steal from Strip

Madonna will have to forgive a moment of odd civic pride I felt at her expense while watching her Re-Invention Tour last weekend.

We all know a "Vegas-style show" used to mean something oily and sequined. Our main exports were summer tours by Wayne Newton or Liberace.

But the Strip has come so far, everything Madonna hit us with at the MGM Grand Garden provoked a sort of, "been there, done that" reaction.

The bombardment of video -- projected on four mobile panels -- was equal to, but not greater than Celine Dion or Elton John at Caesars Palace. The obvious difference is that the Caesars screen doesn't have to pack up and move, so it's larger and of higher definition. But give Madonna's production designers bonus style points for the way the mobile screens doubled as design elements, moving around to frame the singer and dancers.

The screens and their imagery would probably be exciting and provocative in the Midwest, if Madonna was actually playing anywhere in the Midwest except Chicago.

But there was nothing in the edgy-but-artistic sexual imagery that David LaChapelle didn't do for John's videos or that Cirque du Soleil didn't do in person with "Zumanity."

Cirque is perhaps the biggest reason we are permitted this jaded reaction. Pop tours have been lifting from Cirque for years. Remember when Paula Abdul was a pop star instead of a talent show judge?

Her December 1991 concert stop at the Thomas & Mack Center featured two couples in an aerial ballet, years ahead of the airborne acrobatics in Dion's show and even a year ahead of Cirque's first Las Vegas beachhead in 1992.

By the time Janet Jackson visited the MGM in April 1994, there was an identifiably Cirque look to the harlequin costumes and body-suited mimes with masks worn on both sides of their heads.

By the time of Cher's 1999 show at the MGM, everything had synthesized to the point where there was no need to point fingers at who stole what. Bungee chord acrobats became part of the language of pop, or at least a diva showcase.

Madonna was impressed by a Ricky Martin tour so she hired its director and choreographer, Jamie King, to stage both her 2001 Drowned tour and her current outing. The folks at Mandalay Bay were impressed by the same Ricky Martin show, so they too hired King to create their ill-fated "Storm" revue, also in 2001. (Too bad they didn't wait a year, they might have gotten Martin to star in it.)

"Storm" also used a swinging bridge to dangle performers over the audience, an idea that Madonna and others have modified for concert arenas.

You can argue that all these efforts would benefit from more human energy, and less video and technological eye candy. But whether you like it or not, you can't deny the Strip is at the forefront of it.

Mike Weatherford's entertainment column appears Thursdays and Sundays.