Wandering around the parks during IAAPA week in Orlando, I drove past the empty Cirque du Soleil building in Disney Springs yesterday and said to myself, "isn't about time for us to get some more news about that new Cirque show?"
Well, Disney has delivered, releasing a new "first look" video at rehearsals for the production, which will open this spring.
As previously revealed, the show will be themed to Disney animation and will star a character named Julie, a girl raised by an animator, and follows her through her life as she discovers her own destiny in this art form.
"The show will transport the audience into the world of Disney animation with new original acrobatic sequences, dazzling choreography, musical masterpieces and whimsical characters," Walt Disney World said in its press release.
Disney still hasn't revealed the name for this new production, which replaces La Nouba, the original Walt Disney World Cirque production that closed at the end of 2017.
The new show begins once-nightly previews on March 20, with tickets starting at $67. It opens with two shows nightly on April 18, with tickets starting at $79.
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I'm curious how much influence Disney is having on this production. La Nouba was definitively a Cirque production that was merely staged on Disney property, just like the many shows residing in Las Vegas. However, now that they will be presenting Disney IP and themes, how much creative input does Disney have in this new show, which for some reason doesn't even have a name yet despite guests being able to purchase tickets? Has Disney just licensed the name "Cirque du Soleil" to lend credibility to their internally developed performance? FWIW, they are touting this as a "collaboration", but even a 50/50 share of the creative efforts would represent a major change from La Nouba, which was 100% Cirque. I personally would want to see a Cirque show, not Imagineering's version of a Cirque show.
I look at this as the Disney version of Cirque's Beatles-themed show (which I haven't seen, for the record.) It's just another source of IP to tie together a bunch of Cirque set pieces.
Sure, but the fact that Disney is calling this a "collaboration" between them and Cirque, makes me believe that Imagineers and other Disney employees have their fingers in the pot. Love is just a Cirque show put to Beatles music, just like One is put to Michael Jackson music, with absolutely no creative input from the IP originators, at least not that Cirque has identified.
It definitely sounds like Disney is contributing more than just their IP to this show. It would worry me if Cirque, which has had very few failures over their history, is not in complete control of the production - not just technically and with staffing, but all the way down to the creative aspects of the show.
I live in Vegas, so I’m pretty familiar with how Cirque does these. They’re always presented as “collaborations.” That’s often little more than music and some imagery to connect, as Robert put it, whatever acts they’ve contracted and designed. It’ll likely be very “Disney lite.” No less Cirque than Michael Jackson, Elvis, or the Beatles have been.
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While this may strike a nerve as yet another Non-IP attraction getting "upgraded", I'm really looking forward to it. I loved La Nouba and know that Cirque will make this a heartfelt and quality production.