BEHIND THE SCENES SECRETS FROM CHER’S NEW CAESARS SHOW
Rich reviews are pouring in for Cher and they are calling her the “new Queen of Vegas” and “the cherished icon of pop reinvention.”
Theater critics, reviewers and members of the media were invited to see her fifth show at Caesars Palace and they walked away with the audience raving, showering compliments and applause. Admittedly, they groaned a little about the old videos and ageing acrobatic acts filling up time while she changed in and out of her many sparkling spangled “Sultan of Sequins” Bob Mackie costumes.
But fans want the outrageous over-the-top outfits so they are staying! In fact her fastest wardrobe switch is accomplished in just two minutes although it does take four costume assistants to undress her and dress her back up in the next wardrobe winner. In all, between Cher and her cast of 18 dancers there are more than 140 costumes during each performance.
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Click on the arrrow for Cher’s interview and performance.
The songs and in-between-change video footage covers five consecutive decades and Cher is the rare diva who has had a No.1 hit record in every one of them since the 1960’s! I will never forget meeting Sonny & Cher for the very first time when they recorded “I Got You Babe” in a Manhattan uptown Broadway studio in 1965. Since then Cher has released 25 albums and scored 34 Billboard Top 40 hits. Her previous “farewell tour” ran for a total of three years from 2002 to 2005. Her return now to Caesars marks the end of a three-year hiatus!.
The show is directed by choreographer Dorian Sanchez who previously staged Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana” in London, Peter Gabriel’s “Secret World Tour,” Jane’s Addictions’ “Jubilee Tour” and Cher’s farewell “Living Proof” tour, which received four Emmy Awards. Dorian, who now starts the fourth season of FOX TV’s So You Think You Can Dance says she was the first choreographer to work aerial acts and bungee jumpers into rock and roll back in 1989. Cher’s on-stage co-stars are cross-trained in dance, acrobatic and aerial acts.
“It’s a real fun show,” says Cher. “It would be a great show even if I wasn’t in it! – OK I’ll admit it would be crap if I wasn’t in it!” She joked that even on Media Night she still hadn’t had time to write a new comedy monolog but she explained why she’d started doing comedy standup with Sonny. “We owed the government about $270,000, we had no choice but to go out on the road. We were staying in cheap motels with trains roaring through every hour. All of us were eating food out of the same one pot. Nobody ever came to our second shows so we stood there making up jokes and that’s how the monologs began with us talking to each other!”
Cher’s current sold-out run goes through Sunday, June 1. Then she’ll complete her 2008 concerts with a return Aug. 12, continuing through Oct. 5. Her set with its 65-feet-wide steel bridge weighing slightly less than 20,000 pounds will take just four hours to disassemble, without the use of a single tool, and will be stored here in Vegas until her return each time over the next three years of 195 more shows!