Criss Angel and Cirque du Soleil make magic together
CRISS ANGEL: Believe may have made its debut at the Luxor on Halloween last year, but the illusionist continues to show that a trick-and-treat performance is still very much his bag.
Believe, a collaboration with Cirque du Soleil that was 2 1/2 years in the making, is a fantasy featuring an intense troupe of characters and starring Angel as a surreal enigmatic Victorian noble. It seeks to combine emotion with mysticism, which lies at the heart of who Criss Angel is. For him, it all began with a dream – one of working with Cirque to reinvent the perception of magic just as the renowned company did for circus.
“Many, many years ago, I had the opportunity to watch Cirque in one of its first TV productions,” Angel says. “I was in awe of the artistry, the poetry and the emotions that were evoked from an art form that didn’t possess that prior to Cirque du Soleil – the magic of emotion without even doing an illusion.”
Angel, who wrote the show with director Serge Denoncourt, said he wanted more than the standard collection of illusions in which objects appear and disappear, levitate or are transformed.
"I wanted to get rid of the boxes and the typical presentation that would be associated with those things and present the most sophisticated versions of such illusions," Angel explained.
“This show is about expecting the unexpected,” he continued.. “It’s Believe. For me, it’s about showing people that there’s much more to me that just the ‘Mindfreak’ thing, my TV show on A&E network."
"Doing the same thing kind of gets a little boring, and you become a caricature of yourself," he said. "I’m not interested in that — I’m interested in being the best that I can be as an artist.”
- by Bobbie Katz, Las Vegas Reporter for HelloMetro
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