Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Fire and rain usher in ‘Le Reve’s’ 10th anniversary

‘Le Reve — The Dream’ Unveiling

Mikayla Whitmore

“Le Reve — The Dream” unveils its $3 million show element Friday, Nov. 21, 2014, in Wynn Theater.

‘Le Reve’ Unveiling at Wynn Theater

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“Le Reve — The Dream” unveils its $3 million show element Friday, Nov. 21, 2014, in Wynn Theater.

Click to enlarge photo

“Le Reve — The Dream” unveils its $3 million show element Friday, Nov. 21, 2014, in Wynn Theater.

Click to enlarge photo

“Le Reve — The Dream” unveils its $3 million show element Friday, Nov. 21, 2014, in Wynn Theater.

When you give $3 million to someone with the title of director of artistic implementation, you can bet that there will be some artistic implementation happening.

This is the case with “Le Reve,” the dazzling aquatic production at Wynn Las Vegas. The show turns 10 years old next year, marking that milestone along with the resort, and has added a scene to ensure that the show remains timeless.

“Because it’s out 10-year anniversary, we wanted to do something massive to celebrate the show,” says Louanne Madorma, the above-noted director of artistic implementation for the production. “This is massive.”

This upgrade to the show is titled “Denouement,” itself a mini-production lasting about four minutes. Sixty designers worked 3,000 hours over 18 months, developing first an idea that has exploded into 172 fountains, 16 fire shooters and 120 LED lighting fixtures.

The scene plays out like a cylindrical, hologram-like drape of fire and water through which the artists can emerge. It is certainly dream-like. The creative team, led by Madorma and longtime Wynn General Manager of Entertainment Operations Rick Gray, originally worked on the script of the new act, similar to how a new scene in a play would be conceived.

“It had to fit in with the theme of the dream,” Madorma says. “We talked about developing new equipment and then we started to get very conscious about creating the dreamer’s story, about tying the emotional element to the water, and we story boarded it.”

The company recruited to work on the new element is familiar to the Strip: WET of Los Angeles. It’s the same design company who helped develop the Fountains of Bellagio and also has been looped back in through the years as that attraction has been upgraded. Madorma met with the WET team early in the production of “Denouement” and likened the process to “letting a kid into a big playground.”

“We were in a shed, like a big warehouse, and they put up a column about 4 feet high as a test and said, “Look, you can take your arm through it.’ ” Madorma says. “And I said, ‘Can the dancers can take their bodies through it?’ And they said, ‘Well, we don’t know. I don’t see why not.’ ”

After a little more adjusting of the piece, Madorma herself was the “guinea pig” (her term) and ran her arm through the effect. “I had no fear, and the dancers have enjoyed it because, well, it’s never been done.”

Madorma said the art of advanced technology has been paired with traditional choreography in “Denouement.”

“We really wanted to cue it the way we teach a dancer,” she says. “We count every beat as they move, and we treat the water as a living dancer.”

The “Le Reve” team is proud that it is revamping the show before the production becomes stale. But this is not a new concept to shows on the Strip, as Cirque du Soleil has made plans to update “Zumanity” at New York-New York by the summer of 2015 and “Love” at the Mirage in time for that show’s 10th anniversary in 2016.

In a somewhat theatrical twist, it was Steve Wynn who first brought Cirque to town as a resident show with “Mystere” at Treasure Island. He has poured his heart and soul (and name, for that matter) into “Steve Wynn’s Showstoppers” at adjoining Encore Theater.

Wynn has left the creative development of “Le Reve” to Madorma and Gray.

“Rick and Louanne are the father and mother of the show. I have virtually no involvement in that show and haven’t had any involvement since me and Maksim (Chmerkovskiy, of “Dancing With the Stars”) had the energy to put the (ballroom) dancing in and de-Cirque the show,” Wynn says. “It is still growing and has had a certain degree of critical success here in town. But I must say that it is away from me.”

In promoting “Showstoppers,” Wynn raised some eyebrows when he said that his new show would indeed serve as the anti-Cirque. “Look, we have Cirqued ourselves to death,” he said in an interview in his office last month. “Enough already with the equipment and the hydraulics.”

But just next door to “Showstoppers,” “Le Reve” shares many of the dazzling technologically advanced staging and visual elements as Cirque’s productions. The comparison is so strong that “Le Reve” is often mistaken as a Cirque show in social media and even, still, mass media accounts. The comparison to “O” in particular is still prevalent, given the obvious aquatic similarities.

In his zeal to promote “Showstoppers,” did Wynn make an assessment that is counter-productive to his own decade-old show?

“I don’t think so. It’s something that we’ve been working on to really differentiate ourselves. I don’t think of us as a Cirque show for a lot of reasons,” Madorma says. “If I had to put it in one word, it would be ‘emotions.’ We have an absolute story line. We really try to cross-pollinate theater with the amazing acrobatics of ‘Le Reve.’

“That’s why I say, I know what Mr. Wynn is talking about, and we don’t have massive structures that people do things on in ‘Le Reve.’ We try to be very conscious of the esthetic of the body and of telling the story and the beauty of the story.”

Before she ever worked for Wynn, Madorma saw “Mystere” and was duly impressed by that performance. She saw the first version of “Le Reve,” which was extraordinarily dark in its presentation and vague in its theme. It can be said that “Le Reve” has advanced farther than any Strip production still onstage, with “Believe” possibly sharing that distinction.

“When I first saw it, there was no story line that I could follow, and it is there now because we worked so hard on developing characters. We are telling their story of a collection of dreams, and I’ve talked to the artists often about who they are and what their relationship to each other is,” Madorma says. “I love the direction that it’s gone and that it continues to go to further.

“ … I love it when somebody walks out and recites the story to me. I think, ‘You got it. We’re doing our job.’ And that’s what I really hope happens with these fountains.”

At “Le Reve,” the 10-year-old fire-and-water spectacular, achieving that goal is to live a dream.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.

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