Yesterday afternoon I went to the KA Theatre at MGM to attend a preview of tonight's season premier of CSI. The KA Theatre is the location of one of two casino deaths that are being investigated in the episode. Feel safe to read on: I don't want to ruin the fun for viewers by giving away any plot and I don't really watch the show enough to understand who the core characters are for the cliff hanger at the end. But as a local I really enjoyed the back stage look at how Cirque makes KA function. KA, as I have noted before on the Buffet, has a series of three stages that shift like great titanic plates throughout the show to allow the acrobats of Cirque to defy gravity or use gravity at their whim.

One bit of trivia that came out, and I am curious if it is true, is that Clark County gives Cirque the power to actually control a crime scene to some extent in that dangerous backstage area. In the story airing tonight the body is moved by Cirque employees away from all the shifting stages before the CSI team arrives. The other detail that stuck out involved my favorite part of  KA: the giant stage gracefully lifts straight up dumping tons of sand in a breathtaking effect. I now know that it is not sand at all but finely ground Portuguese cork. Watching CSI along with me were members of the cast of KA who cheered and laughed knowingly as the CSI team marveled at their high tech stage and the amazing video surveillance system KA uses that covers almost the entire stage with cameras to allow the directors to review any motion of a cirque performer each performance for critique. The size of the theatre does not really come through on television but the wonder, oddity, strange beauty and, more than anything, the massive effort it takes to put together a Cirque show are all obvious even on a small screen.

photo by Sarah Gerke