LITTLE ROCK — For Neil Goldberg, founder, director and producer of Cirque Dreams, the company’s Cirque Dreams Holidaze show, coming into Little Rock’s Robinson Center Music Hall this week under the auspices of Celebrity Attractions, is special.
“We have found a unique way to combine the spirit of celebrating the holiday with these amazing acrobats and performance artists from all over the world that is really incomparable,” Goldberg says.
“For two hours, there are 32 performers who move like a kaleidoscope on the stage. These artists play the roles of more than 300 different ornaments; when the curtain rises, they are suspended from this 30-foot-tall tree, and one by one, they come down and perform these amazing feats. Skaters turn into penguins. Aerialists turn into angels. Acrobats and contortionists turn into rag dolls and candy canes. Snowmen are bouncing around the stage.
“Taking the holiday experience and blending it with the spectacle of music and costumes in an amazing stage production really sets this apart from, not only any other show that we’ve done under Cirque Dreams, but any other cirque show in the world.”
Goldberg says that while some cirque companies recycle bits from one show to another in different guises, this is “very different” from his other shows.
“I’m not going to profess that people aren’t going to see an act that they may have seen on a reality TV competition; we have a team of jump-ropers that are world-class athletes that were finalists on America’s Got Talent and one of MTV’s dance contests. [But] we turn them into reindeer, pulling on a sleigh with Santa, to a remixed version of ‘Winter Wonderland.’
“And the whole experience just changes. The way it’s presented, people will not have seen it. And there are many things that people have not seen before.
“I’ve been asked what is my favorite moment of the show, and I always say, ‘When that curtain first comes up.’ The magic of theater, you don’t really know what to expect, you don’t know what’s on the other side.
“In a cirque show, we use the ceiling, we use every space. So when that curtain goes up, it’s not a bunch of people standing on a floor or on platforms. These performers are dangling in the air, just dotted all over. And then it just comes to life and the movement is so kaleidoscopic, so fast paced.” Goldberg established Cirque Dreams in 1993; this is the fourth year for Cirque Dreams Holidaze. “We now have three identical productions going to more than 35 cities throughout the United States and overseas,” he says.
The idea is to take the show to anyplace, regardless of size, and put it on whether it’s the proscenium theater for which it was designed or an arena.
“Not everybody has the opportunity to go to New York and see a Broadway show or to go to Vegas,” Goldberg explains. “The fact that we can roll into any city in the country and set this up on stage, and people can see this in their own backyard, that’s really what our brand has been most notorious for.”
Cirque Dreams Holidaze
7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday, 10 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Robinson Center Music Hall, West Markham Street and Broadway, Little Rock
Sponsor: Hutchinson Financial
Tickets: $67.50, $53.50, $38, $25; $36 all seats Thursday morning
(501) 244-8800; (800) 982-2787
Ticketmaster.com; CelebrityAttractions.com
Style, Pages 49 on 11/25/2012