Singer Pink’s acrobatic concerts put Miley Cyrus and her gently-swaying wrecking ball to shame.
A two-hour special, “The Truth About Love Tour” — featuring footage from Pink’s current road trip — debuts Saturday at 8 p.m. on EPIX. The rocker showcases her vocal and athletic prowess in stunts that rival those of big-top acts and Cirque du Soleil performers.
Pink’s longtime aerial trainer, LA-based Dreya Weber, admires the singer’s guts.
“In most tours, it’s the performers around the artists that are doing the difficult things, so she’s incredibly unique,” Weber says. “No one else has even attempted it. This is completely new, and it always just comes down to her saying, ‘Well, I’m doing it.’ That’s where her feisty spirit kind of steps in.”
Weber — an aerialist and choreographer who has worked with artists including Cher, Katy Perry and Rihanna — says the 34-year-old Pink has “blurred the line” between singer and highly-trained circus performer.
Pink, who brings her “Love” tour to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn Sunday and Monday, unleashes a mesmerizing display of flips, spins and somersaults in the special. And whether she’s catapulted 20 feet in the air by bungee cords for the opening number, “Raise Your Glass” — or dangled upside-down by her ankles in an apparatus devised by Weber for the song “Try” — Pink always sings live. No lip-syncing.
A decade of intense training with Weber, a Hunter college graduate, made that happen. “I had her do sit-ups where I stood on her stomach and, like, bounced up and down and had her sing. And then I had her hang from her knees from a trapeze bar and swing back and forth as I poked her stomach,” says Weber, 52. “Each time, I was, like, ‘Okay, sing. Can you sing the high note? Can you hold the note?’ It was really fun to discover that everything’s possible.”
Weber is proud of their longtime collaboration. “Each time I’ve worked with her we’ve been able to make it more and more complex and demanding,” she says. “I consider myself very fortunate to have crossed paths with her.”
The stunts, however, can be dangerous. While performing in Germany in 2010, Pink was injured — thankfully, not seriously — when she was accidentally pulled off-stage by a tethered aerial harness that wasn’t properly secured. “She got back on it immediately with the next show,” Weber says of the resilient performer.
In one of the EPIX special’s more jaw-dropping sequences, Pink performs her 2008 song “Sober” while climbing on a rotating, egg-shaped metal cage high above the stage. She alternately moves around the structure’s inner and outer edges — and even hangs, arms outstretched, from a beefy male dancer’s hands, her feet dangling in the air — all without a safety harness.
“We’ve gone through many insurance contretempts through the process of Alecia’s touring career,” Weber jokes about the singer, whose real name is Alecia Moore. “It always comes down to her determination to do it.”
A beaming Pink closes the special with her 2008 hit “So What,” wearing a harness (like the one from her 2010 mishap) that sends her flying around the arena. A camera attached to the rigging captures her point of view as she soars to audience members in the upper levels, nearly grazes those in floor seats and completes a dizzying series of somersaults.
“She loves the feeling of being in the air,” Weber says. “I learned a long time ago that it’s important to give her an environment and let her figure out what she wants to do. She really communicates the joy of it to the audience. Even seasoned professionals are not often able to bring spirit to it the way she does.”
That, says Weber, creates a unique experience for Pink’s gravity-hindered fans. “It’s tied to the human desire to fly. So many people dream about it,” Weber says. “The best of aerial performance captures that. In an arena with 15,000 people, there’s quite an opportunity.”