Cirque du Soleil has attempted to stage a lasting presence in the Big Apple now for a number of years, and succeeded on a seasonal basis with Wintuk in 2006. The company thought a more permanent presence was well on its way when it signed a re-development deal with Related Companies to establish a home on Manhattan’s Pier 40. With that possibility quashed, would Cirque find a space to endure in New York City? It appears in the next year, it will. Here’s more from the New York Times:
- In February 2010 Cirque plans to bring a new show to the Beacon Theater in Manhattan for a multiple-month run that it hopes will become an annual institution. And in 2011 Cirque is to establish a four-month summer extravaganza in Radio City Music Hall as a warm-weather counterweight to the “Christmas Spectacular” — sans Rockettes, but populated with acrobats and clowns. These will be in addition to the company’s touring tent productions […]. Also continuing will be “Wintuk,” Cirque’s $20 million annual winter holiday show at the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden.
What will this new show for MSG Entertainment entail? While details about the show itself were not released, where else it might play sounds quite interesting to say the least…
- [The] still unnamed show, for the Music Hall, “will fully utilize the space and spend half of each year in Paris or London,” and have 72 to 80 performers, said Mr. Laliberté.
Guy Laliberté also took a moment to describe for the New York Times what the new production was going to be:
- [P]ossibly titled “Vaudeville,” as a show about that tradition, with a cast of 50 to 55, to be directed by David Shiner, also the director of “Kooza.” The show, written by Laurence O’Keefe, the author of music and lyrics for “Legally Blonde,” is to be in tryouts from Nov. 19 through Dec. 31 at the Chicago Theater in that city. The show will run at the Beacon for at least three months and could be extended to half a year.
For the next couple of years, it appears Cirque du Soleil is ready to light up the Big Apple in a very exciting way!
Read the full article here.
{ SOURCE: New York Times }
