COVER STORY
 When KA opened at the MGM Grand in February of 2005, it was a totally unprecedented experience – even for its creators, the world-renowned Cirque du Soleil.
At the time, the show was not only the most expensively produced show in Las Vegas ($165 million) but it was – and still is -- also the most technologically advanced. The fact alone that there is no permanent stage has allowed KA to totally break new ground.
Rather, KA uses two main platforms and five others, all run by hydraulics, to set the stage for its story that has duality as its theme, illustrated by a combination of acrobatic performances, martial arts, puppetry, multimedia and pyrotechnics. The main stage, which runs on a gantry crane, houses something called a sandcliff deck, and “can do everything but straighten your tie,” as Jerry Nadal, Senior Vice President Resident Shows Division of Cirque du Soleil, pus it. Any way you turn it – and it goes up, down, and all around -- audiences will see a spectacularly different scene, be it sand, sea, mountains or snow. It all serves to give the 72-member cast and production an ethereal kind of lift on which to present high action.
 “The second stage, called the Tatani Deck, has the ability to go up and down and in a horizontal manner,” Nadal explains. “The other five stages turn stage right or stage left and one takes the shape of the apron of the stage. They are run on gala lifts on a spiral spinning technology. Mark Fisher, our set and scenic designer, came up with the floating stage technology. Using hydraulics for a main stage, especially one of this size, has never been done to this extent in a theater before. The hydraulics were our biggest challenge.”
“What the performers do on that stage is breathtaking,” Nadal adds. “In one scene that has the cast rotating around on a cliff chasing each other, one performer falls from the top of the stage, a distance of 90 feet. Even though we have safety nets underneath, we still felt it was too dangerous. So we put air bags on top of the safety nets.”
Nadal points out that what also makes KA different from other Cirque du Soleil productions is that is the most theatrical show the company has ever done. He describes it as having an actual theme that runs like a ballet plot in an obvious storyline, without dialogue, save for a vocal narration in the beginning that sets the stage for the story to be visually told. The entire show is a narrative that is almost cinematic, which called for more technologically advanced visual effects than Cirque du Soleil had ever attempted. They were created in Germany by Holger Forterer.
The story of KA is that of separated twins – a girl and a boy –who embark on a perilous journey to fulfill their linked destinies. Their quest capitulates them through one challenging landscape after another as they are relentlessly pursued by archers and spearmen, confronting characters and events representing the opposing forces of good and evil. On a mysterious seashore, in menacing mountains and deep within forbidding forests, the epic saga unfolds, finally revealing a subliminal message – peace wins out --in a happy ending.
 “Cirque’s Founder and CEO Guy Laliberte feels that no matter what you do in life, you have the opportunity and the responsibility to leave the world a better place than you found it,” Nadal acknowledges. “That is the theme that runs through KA.”.
Laliberte picked Robert Lepage to write and direct KA, which takes its name from the ancient Egyptian belief in KA, an invisible spiritual duplicate of the body that accompanies every human being throughout this life and into the next. Lepage’s curiosity and innovative spirit and his vast experience in theater made Lepage, in Laliberte’s eyes, the only man for the job. Lepage is perhaps best known for his innovative use of technology to tell compelling stories on stage. With his task being to create an epic saga, he knew that the only way to do that was to find a pretext for a conflict in the story, which was most unusual for Cirque du Soleil.
“Even if Cirque du Soleil has had some kind of loose narrative in some of their shows, it’s never been about confrontation or conflicts,” Lepage says. “Not that the show is specifically about that but you can’t create an epic saga if you don’t confront your heroes with difficulty of some kind. Fire is the one thing that holds everything together in KA. It’s the storyline and the saga. It creates conflict and destruction as it gives life and light.”
According to Nadal, it took three years to create KA and it takes 105 technicians to run each show. All of the production’s creative elements are essential to invoking the world of KA, including the lavish costumes, designed by Marie-Chantale Vaillancourt, which have an Asian influence. Then there is the original score by Rene Dupere that sets the mood for the show, which is driven through an elaborate audio system that surrounds the audience in sound. All of it happens in a beautiful high-tech theater that holds 1,950 seats.
“I think that when Guy was looking at the opportunity presented to us by the MGM Grand, one of the questions was, how much Cirque is too much Cirque?” Nadal sums up.“If we did four ‘Mysteres,’ it would be too much. ‘O’ at the Bellagio is different because of the water and ‘Zumanity’ at New York-New York is a cabaret-style show. But Las Vegas is getting bigger and bigger and we knew we had to up the ante. We had to top ourselves and make it different. That’s KA.”
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ADDITIONAL
ARTICLES
BY
BOBBIE KATZ
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