Las Vegas’ newest attraction has audiences on their feet and ready for action. immersive disco showDirected by Steven Hoggett and choreographed by Yasmine Lee, Disco celebrates the revolutionary beginnings of disco in New York City nightlife in the 1970s. The 70-minute Spiegelworld production, in partnership with Caesars Entertainment on the Las Vegas Strip, features a time-specific score and evolving choreography that unfolds across a multi-level space as the audience not only It’s something to watch, and also to be enchanted with the performers.
Lee spent some time discussing how she uses movement to help tell the story disco showStories of artistic expression.
What research did you do for this piece?
The show is set in the early days of disco, when it was still an underground movement. We were tapping into the pre-commercial phase of disco, the phase before Studio 54, when the founders were developing the style. These include brown people, Latinx people, black people, gay people in New York City, and single women. I think the real beauty of disco is that it’s true self-expression. What ends up in the performance space is 100% made by the people we work with to make it.
How does the energy shift from rehearsal to performance when everyone is interacting with the audience?
We did a workshop version in New York before opening in Las Vegas so we were able to test some ideas and see how audiences behaved and reacted or didn’t react. I think the New York audience is a little different than the Las Vegas audience. There is still much to learn.
How does the show evolve with different audiences in the room?
When you’re on the dance floor, when those beats, lyrics, and melodies hit your body and soul, you’re invited to be yourself. Even during the audition, I could feel the pure joy of people being in the room together on the dance floor. So, in that sense, very little has changed, because the inherent joy of lifting each other up on the dance floor is something that has been there for all these performers since the beginning.
What was your biggest takeaway from this process?
We need each other and people want to be together. It was amazing to be in the center of this show and watch people change when they left the room compared to when they entered.
