It’s tough enough to fill an arena when you have a superstar. What do you do without one?
If somebody could come up with a solution, it’s Cirque du Soleil, whose latest spectacle, “Michael Jackson — The Immortal World Tour,” starts a three-day run at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday.
“It’s a hybrid of a theater show and a rock concert, with all the whimsy and fantasy of Cirque married to the language of Michael Jackson,” explains choreographer Travis Payne. “Hopefully his fans are spoken to in a way they can appreciate, even though he’s not there physically.”
Payne is well-placed to know what’s legit or not when it comes to the King of Pop: He was a dancer on Jackson’s 1992 “Dangerous” tour, and worked his way up to co-choreographer of his last project, “This Is It.”
He’s just one of the several people associated with “Immortal” who can boast direct ties to Jackson. Payne first met the show’s director, Jamie King (a longtime Madonna associate), on the “Dangerous” trek, while musical director and keyboardist Greg Phillinganes first played with Jackson on the 1979 album “Off the Wall.”
All these participants helped capture Jackson’s spirit, a key element since the show’s building blocks are his songs. When training the dancers, Payne says he told them, “It’s not just movement for movement’s sake — it’s about story telling, which Michael was really brilliant at. He created a language that was all his own.”
But like Cirque’s other shows based on famous pop acts — The Beatles’ “Love” and Elvis Presley’s “Viva Elvis” — “Immortal” isn’t a slavish tribute. “We didn’t want to go with an impersonator,” laughs Chantal Tremblay, the Montreal-based company’s director of creation.
So you hear Jackson’s voice, but it’s backed by a live band, and the songs have been re-arranged and mashed-up to accommodate two hours packed with dancing — plenty of it — and Cirque’s trademark acrobatics.
After director King picked the songs he wanted to use, musical designer Kevin Antunes (who’s worked with Madonna and Justin Timberlake) was given access to the singer’s catalog.
He had fun digging deep. “Along with the hits, there was a lot of thought about using songs that might not be so recognizable,” Antunes says. “For the ‘Thriller’ scene, we used some of the cool orchestral score that Elmer Bernstein did for the video.”
A Cirque show based on Jackson makes sense in every way. After all, the star anticipated the high-concept, visually driven turn that other pop concerts would take. There isn’t a contemporary arena tour that doesn’t bear his influence, from Britney Spears to Lady Gaga.
But his personal world, heavily drawing on fantasy, was also a natural fit for Cirque.
Tremblay recalls visiting Jackson’s estate with her team, which gave them inspiration. “The aerial swan number with straps was suggested by swans we saw on the lake at Neverland,” she says.
The trick was to channel decades of artistic and musical history into an event that can stand on its own.
“Once Michael left the stage for good, he left behind all this great information,” Payne says, “so we were just trying to represent those things in a show that won’t last four hours! Hopefully the spirit of Michael’s creativity is woven through it.”