Marilyn (my wife) and I have just finished watching the BBC's Imagine Programme about the making of the new Love performance- a collaboration between Cirque and Apple Corp. The picture here is from Cirque du Soleil .
As Cirque put it "Born from a personal friendship and mutual admiration between the late George Harrison and Cirque founder Guy Laliberté, LOVE brings the magic of Cirque du Soleil together with the spirit and passion behind the most beloved rock group of all time to create a vivid, intimate and powerful entertainment experience."
They started from the lyrics and the lives of the four Beatles, built on those insights to create a marvellous performance that combines the soul of the Beatles and the essence of Cirque du Soleil into an experience that brings smiles to the faces of the Beatles families, the Cirque team, Sir George and Giles Martin, the original audiences of Beatles fans, Cirque fans and new Beatles fans.... which is fairly amazing!
The creators have deconstructed what existed into its elements- lives, lyrics, soundtracks, key events, etc. They remixed these using the key events to frame these elemental building blocks, constructing a masterwork. As Paul McCartney says "book scripts turn brown and fade, paintings and sculpture end up gathering dust in museums and art galleries, but our original recordings can be reinterpreted for ever and what has made that possible? Technology." Sir George said " I've entrusted most of the remixing of the original Beatles material to Giles (his son) as he has a command of modern technology."
Dominic Champagne, [as it says on the Cirque members website]who directed and wrote the original concept for the show, explained his vision for LOVE: “I wanted to create a Beatles experience rather than a Beatles story, taking the audience on an emotional journey rather than a chronological one, exploring the landscapes and experiences that have marked the group's history.”
He spent many hours over a long period talking to the main protagonists in the Beatles story to ensure he incorporated their wishes into the performance whilst gently persuading them to take what they saw as risks.
But there has to be a vision that incorporated Dominic's and Sir George's intuitions defining the experience to be delivered enabling the creatives [ the performers, set designers, musicians, technicians, engineers, costume designers and makers and so on] to channel their energies into how that experience is to be delivered- the thoughts, insights, ideas, concepts and experiments that resulted in the final scheme that could be deployed as THE PERFORMANCE that delivers an experience faithful to the vision.
How many of us take off our weekend heads that are moved by such experiences and attach our working week heads that do things that are "good enough". Imagine working at the level of Cirque during the week to create products and servicesthat enable experiences that change the way people go about their lives, putting a smile on their faces.... how can we do that?
I was fortunate enough to see "Love" recently but have not yet seen the programme you mention. It screened here but I missed it and didn't realise it was a BBC Imagine show. Thanks for the lead, off to search the TV schedules now!
Love (the show!) is an amazing experience. I've put a link to my own post about it on this comment if you are interested.
http://rcd.typepad.com/rcd/2006/12/love_and_au.html
Posted by: Robin Capper | December 29, 2006 at 10:11 AM
is there a list anywhere of each track on the disc LOVE with an in-order list of the songs mixed/mashed into each track
Posted by: Ed Nies | January 20, 2007 at 04:57 PM