Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Nitro Circus Live’ is meticulously planned — to a point

Aaron

Justin M. Bowen

Aaron “Wheelz” Fotheringham of Las Vegas performs a front flip off the 50-foot-high Nitro Giganta Ramp during “Nitro Circus Live” on Saturday, June 4, 2011, at MGM Grand Garden Arena.

Nitro Circus

A look at Nitro Circus Live that made its North America debut Saturday, June 4, 2011 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. Launch slideshow »

Aaron "Wheelz" Fotheringham

Local Las Vegan, Aaron Launch slideshow »

The deal on Wheelz

Nitro Circus fans await the show

Click to enlarge photo

"Nitro Circus Live" made its North American debut Saturday, June 4, 2011, at MGM Grand Garden Arena.

Click to enlarge photo

"Nitro Circus Live" made its North American debut Saturday, June 4, 2011, at MGM Grand Garden Arena.

Click to enlarge photo

"Nitro Circus Live" made its North American debut Saturday, June 4, 2011, at MGM Grand Garden Arena.

When encountering “Nitro Circus Live,” you first consider how one defines “choreography.”

A choreographer directs, creates and arranges movement, yes? Given that, “Nitro Circus Live” is painstakingly choreographed. Every phrase uttered by the series announcers and each act executed by the performers at Saturday’s show at MGM Grand Garden Arena was choreographed to the point where, you would expect, nothing was left to chance.

Except, every stunt was left to chance.

This is because directing a pair of FMX riders to execute a tandem double back flip and landing at precisely the same moment, without tumbling, is far more complicated than this:

“Fellas, we’re going to need you to do this double back flip, land it, wait for the cheers, wave and dive into the crowd for some crowd surfing.”

At “Nitro Circus Live,” you don’t expect one of those performers to say, “What if we’re dumped on our butts?”

This is because extreme athletes don’t choreograph such a moment, even though that sort of mishap befalls each of them at some point. High-altitude miscalculations are part of the danger and, yes, delight for fans who have made FMX and BMX gymnastics a highly popular form of entertainment around the world.

The sport’s top star, the incurably revved-up Travis Pastrana, said as much during the early moments, imploring to a capacity crowd of 10,500 that, “This isn’t scripted! This isn’t Cirque du Soleil! This is real!” In a moment that may or may not have been scripted, Pastrana took a knee and bellowed a marriage proposal to his girlfriend, pro skateboarder Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins.

Hawkins did not refer to any TelePrompTer when she said yes.

So it’s all planned, yet it isn’t, for “Nitro Circus Live.” The high-artistry exhibition ascended to widespread appeal on its MTV reality show, and before that gained a niche following on the X Games on ESPN. It has vaulted, sky-high, from alleyway stunts created by imaginative kids on customized BMX bikes and skateboards to a global powerhouse to be featured in a 3-D movie due out in February.

That film, which involves the production team that conceived “Jackass 3-D,” has halted the TV show. It also is the reason MGM Grand was made up as a giant film set Saturday, with the 50-foot Giganta Ramp as the centerpiece. Additional ramps were set up for FMX artists, as dozens of the sports' best and brightest athletes fired up an audience in a spectacle that often reminded of Evel Knievel’s leap over the Caesars Palace fountains in 1967.

That is, if there were 20 or so Evel Knievels jumping the fountains on motorcycles, bicycles, boogie boards, tricycles, wheeled snowboards, a tandem motorbike, a bike with a sidecar welded to its side and even a guy stuffed into a cooler, which was also, thankfully, outfitted with wheels.

“You ride it, you jump it!” is the show’s mantra, and the feeling is that if a kitchen sink were tricked-out with a set of wheels -- and in the hands of these guys, that is possible -- it would be next in line at the Giganta Ramp.

There was no sink, but there was the wildly suspenseful appearance of Las Vegas’ own wheelchair-riding extreme sports star, fan favorite Aaron “Wheelz” Fotheringham. The 19-year-old young man who prefers to say he’s “on” rather than “in” a wheelchair suffers from spina bifida and has been in -- er, on -- the chair since age 13.

Before the performance, in a wacky meet-and-greet with VIP fans and media, Fotheringham said he planned only, “Some gnarly tricks. … I’m going to do a front flip, for sure, but the rest is all fuzzy. I’m still trying to figure it out. I’ve procrastinated a little bit.”

Yes, Wheelz needs to work on his work ethic. We joke, of course.

Fotheringham did execute the front flip brilliantly, landing with a satisfying thud, as the crowd roared and his fellow performers swarmed him at the bottom of the thinly padded ramp. Later, he was not so fortunate. Wheelz attempted a double back flip, and the danger of such a stunt was played out in a jarring-yet-comical video montage showing him tumbling after misfiring on similar attempts over his brief career.

Wheelz is the first person to ever execute a single back flip in -- er, on -- a wheelchair but didn’t land the double cleanly Saturday night and spilled from the chair after an off-kilter landing.

Wheelz quickly raised a hook-’em-horns sign to the crowd as event officials gathered him back into his chair (he says he has built up his upper body to add human padding for such non-choreographed moments). Meanwhile, performers on BMX bikes still soared toward him from the Giganta Ramp, the performance continuing its uninterrupted, and extreme, series of stunts. Fotheringham was later treated for bruised ribs.

The 3-hour show (including a 15-minute intermission) finished big with a highly anticipated tandem FMX double back flip by Pastrana and his handpicked partner, Cam Sinclair. Only three athletes have ever executed even a solo double back flip on an FMX machine; Pastrana was the first 5 years ago. Sinclair has executed it, too, but not always flawlessly. A failed attempt in July 2009 in Madrid landed him in a coma. He also suffered a fractured shoulder, a broken cheekbone and a ruptured liver that required emergency surgery. But Sinclair has since won an X Games gold medal in the double back flip discipline.

As Pastrana and Sinclair roared toward the side-by-side ramps built for FMX riders, the choreography ceased. Remarkably, they flipped backward, twice, their images mirroring each other. They landed with a single “whump!” and the crowd once more went wild.

Pastrana raced into the crowd and was passed up the lower section of the MGM Grand.

Not sure it that stunt was on the formal schedule, but like everything else the Nitro crew staged, it was really fun.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow "Kats With the Dish" at twitter.com/KatsWithTheDish.

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