Deck the Malls

Thursday, Dec. 9, 2004 | 8:19 a.m.

It seems trying P creating a mall show with dancers from the Strip, a gate agent at McCarran International Airport, two Las Vegas models and a borrowed 1960 Cadillac Eldorado.

It involves crowded, but well-organized, dressing areas and a crew that knows how to move quickly. Then there's the 50 gallons of nontoxic bubble-making soap and three local weathercasters who wonder how they could make it snow in Las Vegas.

But it happens.

Amid Tommy Bahamas, Steve Madden, Godiva Chocolates and Cento & Fanti, Christmas materializes. It rises from below, packaged in a glass cube from which Santa and his leggy dancers emerge onto a runway.

It sparkles, this Christmas. And at the end of its three-song razzle-dazzle, "snow" falls on the Great Hall in the Fashion Show mall.

"You just can't beat it," said "Crazy Girls" dancer Ruthie Gastineau, referring to the experience of performing as one of Santa's dancing helpers in Fashion Show's "Discover the Magic" holiday show. "It's during the holidays so you get the fill of Christmas."

Gastineau boasts jokingly about her transition from Santa's innocent helper in a red velvet dress to being one of "Las Vegas' sexiest showgirls." A nearby "X" dancer jokingly rolls her eyes.

The two are among 10 performers from local shows, including "Risque," Excalibur's "Tournament of Kings" and Treasure Island's "The Sirens of TI," dancing in the 10-minute show that runs Wednesdays through Sundays until Christmas.

Bud Slade, a gate agent for America West at McCarran, is Santa. His long white hair, beard and silver reading glasses make him a target at shopping malls and at work, where children tug his sleeve and say, "Santa, come look at this."

"Children come up to me at the airport and say, TSanta, I'm not going to be at home. I'm going to Cincinnati,' " Slade said from his dressing room, where his microwave-heated beef enchilada dinner cooled.

Now that his five years of playing Santa at McCarran has ended, Slade said he's happy with his day job at Fashion Show. His granddaughter Brianna serves as his assistant.

"Last year I had a song to sing," Slade said with a smile that only this real Santa could wear.

With its year-old, $1 billion expansion and prime location on the Strip, Fashion Show couldn't settle for a one-time Santa arrival to kick off the holiday shopping season.

"It's a tradition for Santa to arrive at a shopping mall during the season," said Steve Pospisil, vice president and director of creative content for General Growth Properties, which owns and operates more than 200 malls across the country.

"Rather than have him come once and just sit there, he arrives at the Fashion Show three to four times a day."

But it can get busy. Four days a week, the shows are preceded by the Fashion Show's "Holiday Fashions" runway show, which brings in a dozen or more models and requires a set change in less than five minutes.

"It's a pretty complicated series of events," crew member Joe Lucchese said. "But once you get it down, it works pretty easy. We have it down to a science and I use the term loosely."

Triumph Entertainment, the Florida company that produces the show, won't reveal the production's cost, but says it is a low six-figure production.

The holiday show's lengthy prelude involves music, roving spotlights, "skyledescapes" (large blinds that move up and down from the ceiling), and video of Las Vegas weather reporters Darren Peck, John Fredericks (and his dog Jordan) and Sherry Swensk.

Rita Rudner, Clint Holmes, members of the cast of "Mamma Mia!", Lance Burton and dancers from "Jubilee!" are among Las Vegas acts providing a videotaped welcome to the "Big Guy," who arrives in the cherry-red Cadillac. Las Vegas Fire and Rescue and Metro offer their greetings.

"We wanted to have a show that's warm, traditional and gets everyone in the spirit," Wyatt Foley, general manager of Triumph Entertainment, said. "It draws people into the shopping center and enhances the experience."

Henderson resident Andrea Atkinson is that shopper.

"We came last year," Atkinson said, while wheeling away her toddler after a 4 p.m. show. "Nobody else has a show like this in Las Vegas. It's nice to see snow in the desert. You don't see it very often."

Prior to the show Amelia Bruff, a former "Jubilee!" dancer who now freelances, sat before a television with her colleagues (some overlapping) on a brown couch and chairs, waiting to go on.

"We got a really good group of people," Bruff said. "You kind of know each other through day jobs. Last year we cried on the last day. For me, personally, it's been the best job I've ever had.

"They treat us well here."

After having her makeup touched up by Gastineau, "Crazy Girls" dancer Kimberly Denmark said the show is also convenient.

"Our last show is at 8," she said. "We can just leave and go across the street to the Riviera."

With a showy smile, Gastineau added, "And we already have our lashes on."