“LA NOUBA: Still Living it Up!”

The evening of May 8, 1999 is a date I shall never forget.

From Section 205, Row LL, Seat 17 I was about to be indoctrinated into the world of Cirque du Soleil for the very first time. To tell you the truth I had my reservations about seeing the show. Its cost was astronomical to me back then, and I wasn’t into the theater like many of my friends were at the time. I was afraid I would be bored out of my skull. But I was told Cirque du Soleil would be worth the price of admission… not to worry. And boy they were right! From the very first moment the show began I was completely mesmerized. It didn’t matter that I was soaked to the bone (my friend and I had spent the entire day in the rain at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom). It was of little consequence that my head throbbed with a pounding headache. And it was of little significance that we were as far away from the stage as one could get (well, almost.)

All that became relevant in those 90 minutes was the artistry and pageantry of the performers that danced upon the stage before, and the skills of the musicians who played above me. For it was truly once upon a time… a door opened before me and two worlds collided. Dreams clashed with reality. The mundane mixed with the marvelous. It was no longer possible for me to tell where one world began and the other ended. I had truly entered the realm of La Nouba and the dominion of Cirque du Soleil. It glowed with spellbinding intensity; a vibrant kaleidoscope of artistry and daring; a splash of iridescent genius. I now knew the color of imagination…

My heart leapt! I would see La Nouba again just twenty-one days later (it was even better the second time!) and again on the 4th of July (Yep, I was hooked!). I would even go on to build a website, launch a newsletter, and even help organize gatherings for like-minded friends… Well, you know all that. It’s hard to believe that this month marks La Nouba’s 15th anniversary – can you believe that? It seems like it was only yesterday I watched Disney and Cirque build the theater at what was then the new Downtown Disney West Side, endured the incessant gushing about Cirque from a good friend of mine until I gave in and went to see the show with him (you keep on preaching, man), and then had my life changed for the better.

What I didn’t know at the time was how hard Cirque’s creative team worked to give birth to the show.

Once Upon a Time…

    “Once upon a time… A door opened and two worlds collided. Dreams clashed with reality. The mundane mixed with the marvelous. It was no longer possible to tell where one world began and the other ended. This new place was called La Nouba.”

“La Nouba was the fruit of 10 years of negotiation, and the fulfillment of long-standing ambition on the part of Disney to include Cirque du Soleil in its roster,” writes Tony Babinski in Cirque du Soleil: 20 Years Under the Sun.
Truth told Disney wasn’t the only entertainment conglomerate interested in Cirque du Soleil in its early days. Once Le Cirque Réinventé became a hit out in Santa Monica it quickly became the talk of Hollywood. Laliberté was courted by Columbia Pictures to make a movie about Cirque du Soleil and its characters. Dawn Steel, Columbia’s president at the time, threw a party to announce the deal, but Laliberté, well… “They were seating all the stars, and I was basically put aside,” he says. “They just wanted to lock up our story and our brand name and walk around like they owned Cirque du Soleil. I walked right out of the party, called my lawyer and told him to get me out of the deal.”

Disney honcho Michael Eisner and Casino mogul Steve Wynn came calling too… but Guy had already learned his lesson. And in 10 years time so did Mr. Eisner. Disney head Michael Eisner remembers that negotiations with Cirque were long and complex, because Cirque insisted on retaining creative independence. His solution was to let Cirque have it. “I’ve been dealing with the movie business for a long time,” says Eisner in the documentary “Run Before You Fly”, “and when you have a Spielberg or a George Lucas or others of that level, you let them have creative control. With Cirque du Soleil and Guy Laliberté, you create a financial box, and you let them do it!”

And so after years and years of negotiations, on July 12, 1996 Cirque du Soleil announced that it had reached a long-term agreement with the Walt Disney Company for a new circus-style theatrical show to be housed within a 70,000 square-foot free-standing theater (to seat up to 1,650 patrons), which would be constructed at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida. “A brand-new production with an international cast of more than 70 performers will take to the stage the magic of Cirque du Soleil. The length of the agreement between parties is extended on a 12-year period and the first Walt Disney World performance will premiere in November 1998,” the post announced but little in the way of the show’s vision was known. Faced with being in the midst of a fairy tale world once upon a time, what would you do? You come up with your own fairy tale of course!

“After working on previous Cirque shows I turned around one day and realized that life had gone by, “Franco Dragone reminisces, “and I hadn’t seen my children grow up. I wanted to re-connect with youth, to show my 19-year-old son that I was still hip. The idea became to see how Cirque could live in a modern, urban environment. I was also very aware that we were setting up a show in Disney’s territory, so to speak. I wanted La Nouba to integrate that fact: we were going back to the world of childhood and fairy tales.”

Every member of the creative team remembers coming to La Nouba feeling depleted after working straight through a challenging string of previous shows. Mystere, Alegria, Quidam, and “O” had all been overlapping productions. Somehow, Cirque had also found time to put together a film production inspired by Alegria in the same period. The group’s fatigue when they came to La Nouba was compounded by the fact that there was very little time to put the show together. Their collective response was to plumb the energy of youth, long the motor of Cirque du Soleil’s inventive power. La Nouba “was made under exhaustion,” admits Laliberte in Babinski’s book. “What helped us get through it,” he continues, “was to make the show a tribute to all the teenagers in the world, which injected a lot of energy into it.”

“With La Nouba we really [went for] an urban, young energy. So we turned to hip-hop,” says Debra Brown. She turned to Clarence Ford, a prolific dancer, choreographer, teacher and film director from Toronto, and invited him to take part in the studio workshops and contribute some of his choreographies for La Nouba. “[He] gave us some essential hip-hop training. If it weren’t for him we would have had to find a completely different way of moving.”

Benoit Jutras (Composer) and Luc Lafortune (Lighting Designer) drew from the same pool of inspiration: “We wanted a very urban show, but it had to be a modern kind of urban, not like something out of Fritz Lang’s ‘Metrpolois’. That’s why you see ‘.com’, ‘shift’, ‘delete’, barcodes and [so forth] on the walls… for the high-tech element.” As for the music? It rocks!

Dominique Lemieux (Costume Designer), on the other hand, drew her inspiration from the world of fairy tales: “The idea of La Nouba for [me] was really like returning to childhood, to that time when you huddle together and try to live out your future on a smaller scale, in your imagination. You ask yourself what will I be, a worker, a ballerina? We tried to have fun, scare ourselves, like we were kids, too, and to touch human tragedy with our fingertips. It meant adopting a different method from the start. For the first time, I started to draw on black pages with white crayons. The characters are born from the dark, from dreams and fairy tales, to reflect the human condition today.”

The story of La Nouba contains two types of families or groups: the urban people and the circus people. The circus characters are denoted by bright, neon colors and the urbanites by dark, gray and muted tones. Costume Designer Dominique Lemieux created 30 different costume concepts, blending historical and traditional circus attire with original contemporary styles. Lemieux drew at least 10 different designs for each costume concept. Many of the performers in La Nouba undergo a metamorphosis indicated by a dramatic costume change. Some principal characters have several costume layers, which are revealed as the story unfolds. An example of this transformation can be seen in the urban costumes. To personify the city dwellers, Lemieux chose textured natural fabrics such as hemp. The urban characters begin in dark, muted blues, reds and greens and end up in white, billowing, and fairy-like outfits.

“Normally, the artists are willing to go beyond what they would normally do,” Lemieux muses. “In La Nouba, we had created these transvestite characters for the Russians to play, to give the show a cabaret feel. And they really, really resisted doing it! But, in the end, they agreed: and they do a wonderful job!”

The costumes for La Nouba were created in a record eight-week period from October 24 to December 23, 1998 at the costume workshop located in the Cirque du Soleil Theater.

And speaking of the theater…

A Kaleidoscope of Imagination…

    “For me, the dark attic in La Nouba is terribly important. Because, in the dark, anything can happen. You can have flying bats and terrors of all kinds in the dark. In the attic of our imaginations, all these characters exist.” – Gilles Ste-Croix (Spectaculara)

The La Nouba performance space is a collaboration of four entities: Cirque du Soleil, Scéno Plus, Walt Disney Imagineering and the Rockwell Group. All four worked together to design and construct what would be Cirque du Soleil’s first (and currently only, but that will change shortly with the construction of the Tokyo 2008 project) freestanding theater built exclusively for their needs. Armed with a budget between $20 and $30 Million (USD), Scéno Plus designed the approx. 75,000 square-foot (7,000 square-meter) drum-shaped theater that is a wonderful testament to both structure and beauty and a shining example of ingenuity and design.

On the outside, the Cirque Theater is like a “castle” standing prominently on the shores of its kingdom, in this case on the shores of Village Lake in Downtown Disney’s West Side. The structure, accented in white Teflon-coated canvas fabric, stands approximately 160 feet tall from the concrete sidewalk to the tops of its spires. Atop the theater rests the namesake of the company in big blue lettering and even higher still, the castle is topped with four fluttering flags featuring the famous sun logo of Cirque du Soleil. And while the outside is something to marvel, the interior is no less
so.

On the inside of this concrete-canvas behemoth, on the second floor, rests its performance space. Like many of Cirque’s theaters, the first thing you’ll notice upon entering is the set and out-in-the-round stage. The set, which has been referred to as an “Elizabethan-style” stage due to its symmetrical style, is said to be reminiscent of a well-traveled path or trail. While that may be true, many see the insane nature of an asylum, and certainly that too is true. That asylum-esque nature is created with a 60×200 foot trellis construct made of PVC panels and scrim, which allow for wonderful projection and shadow play conjuring up uncanny images of Orwellian reminiscence. The wonderful backdrop is overshadowed by mountainous outcroppings, jetting up from the floor on either side. These rocks stand approximately 60-feet tall and are constructed of hard steel, but padded using wood and bleached velour (a velvet-type material.)

Even the showroom seats are abound with detail; modeled after old-fashioned auditorium chairs, these seats are steel and wood constructed and covered in red velvet. They were built by American Seating of Grand Rapids, Michigan especially for La Nouba. But look up from your red-colored seats and see the seven cloud-like “Fabulous Figures” that decorate the ceiling of the showroom; their whimsical dance about the tops of the theater forever captured. These “figures” are manufactured out of copper tubing and wrapped in mesh and measure approximately 30-feet in length. You may not know, though, that these fanciful leapers were designed by Michel Crête, the set designer.

You may spot the musicians next, resting upon two platforms housed in the 75-foot towers rising on either side of the stage. Separated but not disconnected from the performance, these musicians play the various notes of La Nouba’s live music. They do so by staying connected via a complex audio system that allows each musician to speak with the bandleader, their other band mates and take direction if something were to happen. Usually the tick of a metronome is heard throughout their setup to keep everyone on the same beat and time. The platforms themselves are nothing more than steel planks welded together (among other various pieces) and contain an external elevator (which performers rise and lower from during the show.

The stage has many technological achievements also.

The retractable Power Track, as it is called, is 60 feet in length and fully automated, which means computers control the retraction (at 2-feet-per-second) of this enormously powerful trampoline. But don’t let that quick retraction fool you into thinking the floor is light; it’s not, it weighs over 10,000 pounds! The Power Track was specially designed by Cirque du Soleil (and Paco Corp.) to allow the performers to jump higher and faster than ever. The PowerTrack is the next evolution of the FastTrack as seen in Alegría. Ironically the PowerTrack became so popular that it was installed in Alegría, taking the old FastTrack’s place.

The stage comes alive during the performance by a set of elevators commonly referred to as lifts. There are five in all, resting just below the stage surface. The ascent and descent of these lifts are controlled by numerous motors (45 in all!) that must be in complete working order for the lifts to even function. The five lifts themselves rise to a maximum height of 16-feet; the center stage lift is also capable of descending 16-feet below the stage for a 32-feet range of motion! And they each have a 3,000 pound weight capacity. The stage itself is protected by an impact-resilient material called “Mondo Sport Floor” applied over wood in order to avoid injuries to the acrobats and dancers.

Two télépheriques (or tracks) installed along the back wall of the stage are 78-feet (24-meters) above the ground and are capable of moving props, scenery and acrobatic equipment during the show at 4-feet-per-second. These tracks provide an easy system for moving objects in and out of view of the spectators. You’ll find various strange props, lights and chairs gliding by throughout the various acts including “The Grand Monument,” a 40×30 foot structure of aluminum and painted scrim.

The set is fully automated as well. The 25×60-foot Trapeze Net (designed by Doug Kiddell of Cirque du Soleil), for example, is protracted and retracted by eight motors, including two 40-horsepower tensioning winches with up to 5,000 pounds of force. Not one soul comes out to set up or tear down the trapeze net. Additional set pieces are operated using a motorized counterweight system, such as: the trampolines (which descend from the ceiling), the flying doors (of which there are 9), the petite fenêtre volante (or New York Window,) two pedestal platforms and the four trapeze grips.

The JR Clancy Company of Syracuse, New York installed the 44-line set rigging system and 35 of the winches used for these props. The lifts were designed and installed by Showmotion of Connecticut in partnership with Disney Ride and Show Engineering. Westsun Scenic Edge, Inc. of Winnipeg actually designed and installed the computer control system, which makes the space come alive using a Windows NT based program called Dynatrac.

With fixed tiered seating in a 180-degree semicircle around the stage, the auditorium has neither a proscenium arch nor an architectural ceiling, which makes it similar to many of Cirque’s other theatrical ventures. To some, the first glimpse provides the image of a traditional big top; to others, it is Cirque du Soleil’s greatest achievement. Regardless of how you see it, it is a one-of-a-kind structure for Cirque du Soleil in that it’s Cirque’s first stand-alone theater complex, but also a self-contained Cirque world. What do I mean? For the first time, a show space, ticket booths and Boutique (which Scéno Plus also designed) are housed directly in the same
complex.

Michel Crête, Set Designer, sums it all up thusly: “La Nouba is a show that occupies two spaces at once: the world of the modern urban centre, and the world of childhood dreams and visions. In La Nouba, these worlds are not mutually exclusive: they blend endlessly, one into the other. Railroad tracks lead to fairy tales, factories become castle ramparts, and magic continually explodes into the mundane. The set of La Nouba is like a factory, or a childhood attic filled with dreams and nightmares. You never know for sure whether you’re in the world of fantasy or reality. Ordinary objects very quickly become fantastical, like the upside-down bicycle. That’s why doors, windows, are so important: you’re always in-between. It’s deliberately open, deliberately layered. How you see it depends very much on you as a spectator.”

On December 23, 1998, just a few short weeks after the Las Vegas premiere of «O» (Cirque du Soleil’s second resident show) the lights dimmed, the audience hushed and a shock of electric excitement filled the air in the La Nouba Theater for the very first time. It was the culmination of a tremendous amount of hard work, blood, sweat and tears, and a vigorous production schedule that saw the birth of three shows in the span of seven months, but it would forever leave a lasting mark on Cirque du Soleil’s legacy. Now it’s time to confront the mundane and monochromatic, the ordinary and every-day. And in a dull, grey urban world, set the spark of childhood dreams and imagination aflame. Enter La Nouba.

Sit Back, Relax and Enjoy…

    “Ladies and Gentlemen – welcome to Cirque du Soleil. During this performance smoke effects will be used, but these are harmless to your health. The use of video equipment, and especially flash cameras, is strictly prohibited because of the danger it presents to our acrobats. In case of an emergency, please stay calm and proceed to the nearest exit – here, here, here, and here. The ushers will direct you. And now, sit back, relax and enjoy… La Nouba!” (La Nouba’s Opening Narration)

The lights dim down and the audience becomes still now; a shock of electric excitement filled the air as any previous vociferations come to a sharp end. And then the unforgettable sound of a lone trumpet fills the theater, as the Festival of Characters enter, one by one, and introduce themselves to us. The Trumpeter, himself a prince in this fairy tale, brings with him a wonderful medley of personae and a signature melody that warms the heart. We’re introduced to L’Oiseau, the colorful green bird; Les Danseurs, a man and woman in love; the Flying Man, who will soar into our hearts on a band of red silk; the Balancer, colorfully dressed from head to toe, complete with a cat’s tail; an Acrobat in Red, forever tumbling, he stokes the party; Le Promeneur, shuffling about with an ever present smile; and the Titan, a menacing, threatening man. They vanish as quickly as they come, and once again the theater falls lifeless, and dark.

The quiet is disturbed, not by the harrowed scream of a demented creature or of a maiden in distress, but of the chime of a doorbell. Ding dong. Ding dong. The door creeks open, a column of light shines through, outlining the form of a lady, a rather round and lifeless creature, whose job it is to clean and sweep the floors around her. She is the cleaning lady, representing the everyday man or woman, no doubt. But as she goes about her duties, oblivious of the world she has entered, the creatures of this fantastical realm are beginning to stir. The Green Bird tiptoes behind her; sensing a movement, she turns but there’s nothing to be found. But then… startles at a man riding a bicycle upside down across her field of vision. And before her eyes (and ours) more and more weird and wonderful apparitions begin to materialize: two sleepwalking fools canter by; a small train pulls in to station, and the cries of a hungry, estranged wolf mix with the howls and sirens of warning to announce the coming clash of dream and nightmare.

Unable to hold back any longer, the insane world of La Nouba pours forth and spills upon the stage before us. Startled, we all peer at the newcomers as they stream steadily from the opened door. Caught up now as she is in their world, we march forward to their militaristic tune. Fantasy and reality are merging before our eyes and we are lost to make heads or tails of either.

La Nouba is an unforgettable journey through this universe – at once threatening and exhilarating, frightening and familiar. La Nouba is the story of all stories, the site of all mysteries, where dreams and nightmares sleep side by side. La Nouba is memory, individual and universal. It beckons to us, challenges us to uncover passions we thought we’d lost long ago. Here, anything is possible.

As mentioned before, La Nouba contains two types of families or groups and throughout the ride the magic and fantasy of the colorful Cirques (circus people) clash with the monochromatic world of the Urbains (urbanites). But as in fables, it is not so much this contrast as the interplay between these two groups which sparks our curiosity and feeds our imagination. From this encounter is born fear and ecstasy. From this encounter is born La Nouba:

Roue allemande (German Wheel)

What started as a popular gymnastics exercise in Germany has become a crowd-pleasing act for Cirque du Soleil. Six-and-a-half feet in diameter, the wheel consists of two metal hoops joined at six points. Identical twin brothers turn and spin the wheels while performing gravity-defying somersaults and acrobatics. Though both were featured in Cirque du Soleil’s Nouvelle Expérience, this is the first time they performed together as a duo.

Funambule (High Wire)

The Funambule act takes place on a 90-foot, half-inch wide steel wire. With remarkable balance and precision, a high wire walker ascends to a height of 34 feet above the stage as his partner descends from the theater’s eighth level to the fifth on a diagonal wire. The performers’ breathtaking maneuvers include head balancing, and death defying somersaults. Using two different types of bicycles, one of the high wire walkers executes a wheelie and later crosses the wire while carrying another artist on his shoulder. This amazing team is comprised of three acrobats who are life-long students of the discipline.

Diabolos

The diabolo, or Chinese yo-yo, is a children’s game first introduced into the realm of the arts in Cirque du Soleil’s Quidam. This entrancing act features four young Chinese performers. Holding two sticks linked by a string, they slide, juggle and toss a musical wooden spool while performing flips in the air. Demonstrating increasingly difficult maneuvers, the artists attempt to outdo each other in dexterity and ingenuity.

Vélos (Cycles)

This act gets rolling with a BMX wizard whose difficult maneuvers never fail to mesmerize the public. His technical twists, gymnastic turns and spins on one wheel are highlighted in incredible tricks such as G-turns, boomerangs and mega-spins, all accompanied by lots of footwork. The second half of the act features yet another artist whose feats are equally astonishing. His hard-to-believe stunts include riding over obstacles without ever putting his feet down, jumping off high platforms, hopping up and down steps and into the audience on one wheel, and even jumping over an artist and a guest before literally plunging into the bowels of the stage.

Cadre aérien (Aerial Cradle)

The aerial cradle looks like a door and is a perfect example of equal-opportunity strength and agility. This amazing athletic display features elements of traditional circus aerial cradle with a unique and special difference – the male and female artists take turns supporting one another 34 feet above the stage.

Ballet Air et Soie (Aerial Ballet in Silk)

In a stunning display of grace and strength, the artists become one with the ribbon of red fabric that cradles them. This breathtaking aerial dance requires immense agility and flexibility, and allows the performers a wide latitude of acrobatic and artistic expression.

Equilibre sur Chaises (Balancing on Chairs)

Vasily Dementchoukov’s famous chair act was a hit in Cirque du Soleil’s Nouvelle Expérience in 1992. For 11 years now, he has defied gravity and the laws of physics while balancing precariously on a stack of eight chairs, atop a table, 25 feet in the air – all the while carrying a spinning birthday cake lit with candles. For La Nouba, Vasily’s act is performed on a rising platform increasing his maximum height to 41 feet above the stage.

Grands Volants (Flying Trapeze)

Four pendulum-like swings, on two different levels, carry a team of perfectly synchronized aerialists 53 feet above the stage. This innovative bi-level rigging enables the trapezists to create a visually arresting exhibition of rhythm and athleticism. Timing is key when all four trapezes are swinging in tandem and the aerialists switch places – barely inches away from colliding.

Power Track/Trampoline

This act in La Nouba takes ordinary trampoline and power track performance to a new level. The stage is set on fire in this high-energy acrobatic display of phenomenal timing and spatial awareness. Artists jump, flip and otherwise dance upon the trampolines while their comrades take turns walking up the walls on a representation of a high-rise building, complete with windows. The color melds with the surrounding performance… and that pounding you hear in your ears? That’s your heart, as a trio shares the same trampoline and misses each other by just a hair.

Epilogue

During the run of the program, the cleaning lady makes an appearance to woo a frog that has jumped on stage. Led to believe it’s a prince in disguise, she captures the bouncing creature and kisses it. She leaves with her head full of dreams. But we see her agony is not without reward. The frog was a prince indeed! The green carpet is rolled out to them as the two reappear to share with us their consummation into holy matrimony. A flash of folly is thrown at them and the two turn and return into the confines of the open door. Sergeï and Balthazar, our two clowns, closely follow our happy couple as they “mow” the green carpet back into submission. Reality and fantasy once again go their separate ways and the party known as La Nouba comes to a close…

The Color of Imagination…

Ahh yes, that’s how I remember La Nouba! Isn’t it a great show? Alas, La Nouba, like the rest of Cirque du Soleil, is constantly evolving – from new performers and upgraded equipment – no one show is ever the same as another. And La Nouba has not been immune to change.

Vasily Dementchoukov perched atop his stack of chairs for the very last time in 2003, retiring from Cirque du Soleil (and performance in general) after many long and prosperous years. In his stead, Carlos Rodriguez Diaz (Rokardy) – a Cuban-born gymnast who turned heads while participating in several international circus festivals – joined the production and completely transformed his solo act. Rokardy completely transformed his solo act for La Nouba, which was integrated in the show on January 24, 2003.

The artist stacks furniture he has found in the imaginary attic of La Nouba in order to light a chandelier, which mysteriously rises just beyond his reach every time he tries to get to the last candle. Rokardy defies gravity and the laws of physics as he balances precariously on a stack of six chairs, two books, and a baby carriage atop a table elevated 16 feet in the air. When he finally manages to reach the chandelier, Rokardy, who is now 34 feet in the air, surprises by hand-balancing atop his stack, before lighting the last candle.

He would stay with La Nouba for six years, leaving only to perform a variation of his act in Viva Elvis in Las Vegas (2009-2012).

His leaving brought even bigger changes to La Nouba: For the start of the 2010 season, both Balancing on Chairs and German Wheel performances were retired. They were subsequently replaced with an opening Skipping Rope routine (a presentation from Quidam, whereby the Urbains perform rigid rhythms in monochromatic tones, giving way to vibrant dance and acrobatics in a steady stream of solo, duo and group jumps and formations), and with the addition of Anthony Gatto, juggler extraordinaire.

He’s the only juggler in the world to have been awarded the Golden Clown of Monte Carlo, a highly prestigious performance award, and he holds or shares a few juggling records, such as: the most rings juggled and caught (at least twice) and the most clubs juggled. Besides rings and clubs, Anthony is also a whiz at balls, juggling up to nine! Here he juggles all three from hand-to-hand, from arc-to-arc and into home-built props and other receptacles. Quite simply, he’s earned the title of being the best in the world.

Of course Anthony Gatto needed a more permanent home for him and his budding family than Koozå could provide (it’s hard to tour with a new baby), and the Bilodeau brothers? They just needed a change of pace. Bruce and Stacey had been performing with Cirque du Soleil since the tour of Nouvelle Experience (then went on to Fascination and Mystere before landing at La Nouba).

Alas, regardless of whether you remember La Nouba with Vasily Dementchoukov’s famous chair act, balancing on chairs with Rokardy, or have seen it more recently with jumping Urbaines and juggling Gatto it’s still one heck of a show!
Happy 15th Birthday La Nouba – Keep living it up!

Some other milestones…

December 23, 1998 – First Public Performance
January 28, 2999 – Opening Night (Media Gala Premiere)
February 28, 2000 – 500th Performance
February 2, 2001 – 1000th Performance (6:00pm)
March 14, 2003 – 2000th Performance (6:00pm)
April 23, 2005 – 3000th Performance (9:00pm)
May 13, 2006 – 3,500th Performance (6:00pm)
August 10, 2006 – 5 Millionth Guest
June 12, 2007 – 4,000th Performance (6:00pm)
June 19, 2008 – 4,500th Performance (6:00pm)
July 10, 2009 – 5,000th Performance (9:00pm)
July 29, 2010 – 5,500th Performance (9:00pm)
August 13, 2011 – 6,000th Performance (6:00pm)
September 12, 2013 – 7,000th Performance (6:00pm)