SHOOTING STARS: ‘Dance’ fever spreads to Planet Hollywood stage
So they think they can dance. Now, the challenge is to see if they can convince the judges during sixth-season callbacks for Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance.”
The callbacks, which began Saturday, continue through Thursday at Planet Hollywood’s Theatre for the Performing Arts.
“Las Vegas being the center of entertainment in this country, for variety, why not go to Las Vegas?” says judge (and executive producer) Nigel Lythgoe.
And even though the show is using only “a very small part of the theater,” Planet Hollywood’s theater provides an ideal location nonetheless, he comments.
Mostly the stage, of course, “but when you’re bringing 200 or more dancers, it’s good to have a place for them to sit!”
In addition, the theater offers “lots of nooks and crannies” for dancers “to practice their moves,” Lythgoe adds.
Being in Planet Hollywood’s theater will be good preparation for those who do make it onto the show — and will be performing, for the first time in the show’s history, at Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre, home of the Academy Awards.
“When you perform on this stage, you have to rise to the occasion,” observes Lythgoe.
In addition to the Planet Hollywood stage, he notes, Las Vegas itself provides an added jolt of excitement for the prospective dancers, many of whom hail from small towns.
“Sometimes, they’re overpowered” by Las Vegas, he says, “going from living in a town with 2,000 turkeys to being on the Strip.”
The “Race” is on: CBS’ Emmy-winning “The Amazing Race” doesn’t start its 15th run until Sept. 26, but the round-the-world reality series hit Southern Nevada last week for the season finale.
The WRP Group (short for Worldrace Productions, we presume) pulled a Clark County film permit to shoot Aug. 6-8 at McCarran Airport and at various Strip locations, including a pedestrian bridge and the iconic Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign.
According to the Internet’s Reality Fan Forum, the final leg of the show’s international odyssey stretches from Prague to Las Vegas. (Interim stops include Tokyo, Dubai and Stockholm, online posters report.)
The show’s message board included an e-mail last week from the “TAR detective team,” who had “excellent reason" to believe the finale leg was “in or near Las Vegas,” with possible “tasks in the desert” as part of the climactic episode.
“Pop” rocks: Another TV talent competition, Germany’s “Popstars,” continues production around town through Aug. 28.
Based at the Stratosphere, where contestants practice their singing and dancing during daily workshops, the show charts the quest to find a successful music group. After successful male, female and mixed bands, this year’s competition focuses on finding a duo — male, female or mixed.
More than 5,000 performers from throughout Germany applied for the chance to come to Las Vegas. Only 25 were chosen, according to production publicist Isabel Schaffert.
As for the Las Vegas location, “we wanted to bring the contestants to a city that is famous for its shows, artists and celebrities,” she explains. “Vegas is the place in the world one connects with the best shows and entertainment — that’s what our contestants want to achieve and here they can have a first glance on how their life as a popstar could be.”
Car talk: A 2010 model Hyundai will be in the spotlight this week for a TV commercial scheduled to shoot Thursday and Friday nights: the first night downtown, the second in the tunnels of the Desert Inn super arterial. Las Vegas-based Larry Rossi coordinated locations.
No “Fighter” here: Mark Wahlberg stars as boxer “Irish” Micky Ward in the upcoming biopic “The Fighter.” And while the real-life Ward fought at Caesars Palace in 1997, the reel-life Ward slugs it out in a “dingy Boston gym” that recently was “transformed into Caesars Palace” for “The Fighter,” according to a Boston Herald newspaper report.
Little wonder, then, that the Boston-based production (which co-stars Christian Bale as Ward’s drug-addicted half brother) has no plans to film in Las Vegas.
