Three’s Company

Monday, March 20, 2000 | 9:28 a.m.

What: Trilogy with "The Great Radio City Spectacular," starring the Radio City Rockettes, with guest stars Rip Taylor and comedic jugglers Nino and Romano Frediani.

Where: Flamingo Showroom at the Flamingo Las Vegas hotel-casino.

When: Daily except Friday; dinner show at 7:45 p.m., Saturday through Thursday; cocktail show at 10:30 p.m., Monday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.

Cost: Dinner shows start at $52.50; cocktail shows start at $42.50.

Information: Call 733-3333.

It's poetry in slow motion.

Just as a poet chooses the precise word needed to evoke an emotion, three acrobatic performing artists choose the precise movements they need to create living statues -- and they do it slowly as haunting music plays in the background and lights alter the color and mood.

Trilogy, made up of three internationally acclaimed hand-balancing performers, has joined "The Great Radio City Spectacular" at the Flamingo Las Vegas.

While statues may seem out of place in a show that stars the high-kicking Radio City Rockettes and hyperactive comedian Rip Taylor, Trilogy has proven to be a strong drawing card wherever it performs.

Trilogy's nine-minute act is an intense routine of balancing that seems to defy gravity as the performers create near-impossible angles and abstract shapes with their bodies.

"The last two years we've been working in Majorca, Spain, in a 2,000-seat theater. Before that we were in Vegas. We work different places all over the world," said Miguel Soler, 35, director of Trilogy and a native of Barcelona, Spain.

Trilogy also includes Anne-Marie Roche, 30, a native of England, and Chobi Gyorgy, 34, from Hungary.

For its performances, the trio is painted silver. But they won't be confused with Blue Man Group, which recently opened at the Luxor. Blue Man performers are painted blue and beat drums and plastic pipes as they splash paint on stage.

Soler said they chose silver to represent the look of a statue.

"We look very much for the artistic lines. The look is a very strong look, very aesthetic. What we do is difficult. The difficulty is part of the act. The general look of our act is very artistic," Soler explained.

Although Trilogy's act is unusual, Soler declines to take credit for creating the art form.

"This type of act, like everything in life, was already invented. It goes back to the ancient Romans. It's been done in circuses forever. What is different is the way we put it together, the choreography," Soler said.

He said the act almost never changes.

"We work very specific with the music and movement. If we change, we might lose the power of the choreography. We can cut it a bit, but basically we always have the same nine-minute act," Soler said.

Soler credits a magician named Robert Gallup with bringing Trilogy to the United States for the first time about seven years ago.

"We were working together at La Scala (Theater in Madrid, Spain). He was going to co-produce a show at (Lake) Tahoe and invited us to join him," Soler recalled. The group has been in and out of the States since then. It has a four-month contract with the Flamingo.

The three performers seem to have prepared for the act their entire lives.

Soler began gymnastics training at the age of 8. He was Spain's all-around gymnastics champion four times and, in 1984, competed in the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, making it to the all-around finals.

In 1987 he turned pro, performing acrobatics with two men who no longer are with the act.

In 1993 Soler met Roche, a classically trained dancer, when they were on the same bill at La Scala. "Marie grew too tall to be a ballerina. She was performing as a Bluebell dancer, similar to the Rockettes here," Soler explained.

The Bluebell Dancers, a company formed in the 1930s in Paris featuring topless dancing, was the precursor to topless revues that became popular in Las Vegas in the '60s and early '70s.

Roche was one of about 90 Bluebells when she decided to join Trilogy. She had seen the act four years earlier and was enraptured by the artistry.

"I was fascinated from first time I saw it," she said. "And when the opportunity came up to join, I took it."

Roche has been performing with Trilogy for seven years and realizes that the rigors of the act will one day be too much for her. When that happens, she said, she will return to Barcelona and teach dancing.

"Vegas is my office, Barcelona is my home," she said.

Gyorgy joined Trilogy about two years ago after another performer was injured. He and Soler had met during the filming of a commercial in Los Angeles.

"At the time I was working as a stunt man in Hollywood. I was invited to work with him and Marie in Majorca, Spain. We've been together ever since," said Gyorgy, whose film credits include "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "Larger Than Life."

Gyorgy also spent many years as an acrobatic circus clown in Europe. "European clowns work harder than American clowns. They mimic and make fun of the acrobats, and do acrobatics," he said.

Gyorgy didn't always want to be a clown, he just didn't want to sit behind a desk all day. He prefers to be active.

"When I was young, I was on the national swimming team in Hungary. In Europe, after eight years of elementary school, you must decide whether you are going to go to college or to trade school. I was a swimmer and in good physical shape so I applied for the Hungarian Performing Arts School and was accepted when I was 13," said Gyorgy, who won the Silver Clown Award at a festival in Monte Carlo in 1990.

Little did he know that instead of being stuck behind a desk. he would end up being as still as a statue.