Cirque du Soleil is reinstating the climactic “Ka” battle scene that’s been missing since a performer fell to her death in June of last year.
The news media has been invited to a Wednesday afternoon demonstration of the sequence featuring performers suspended from wires and moving on a vertical wall, as though the audience is viewing it from above.
Cirque officials did not say whether the sequence would be back in the show that same evening.
Sarah Guyard-Guillot, 31, fell 94 feet during a June 30, 2013, performance. The Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration later determined the wire rope she was suspended from was cut during a “rapid ascent,” after it came free from the sheave/pulley and scraped against a shear point.
“Ka” reopened without the battle scene in mid-July of last year, almost three weeks after the accident.
Cirque and the MGM Grand later were cited for nine safety and record-keeping violations, but none that required any change to the battle scene.
Still, Cirque kept it out of the show, replacing it with a film almost a year ago.
A Cirque spokeswoman said last year the additional delay was more to take advantage of “available technical possibilities” that didn’t exist when “Ka” opened in 2004, but wouldn’t involve “artistic change nor safety change.”
{ SOURCE: Las Vegas Review-Journal | http://goo.gl/R190y5 }
