HOLIDAY ON ICE
Production "SPEED"
Tour 2011/2012 Germany & France
www.holiayonice.com
30 sep 2011
HOLIDAY ON ICE
Week 39 The rest of the cast have arrived and the skating and sore muscles are the talk of the day. The cast is wonderful and we have already bonded like such a family, I feel so lucky. Today, we have also started first costume fittings. this a very important time as costume houses from Amsterdam, Paris, Belgium and New York are all working at a rapid pace to get our first looks. The next time we see the costumes are for final fittings and then dress rehearsals. The countdown is on!!
HOLIDAY ON ICE
Production "SPEED"
Tour 2011/2012 Germany & France
www.holidayonice.com
22 sep 2011
19 sep 2011
15 sep 2011
HOLIDAY ON ICE - "SPEED"
The brand new spectacular show Speed will be an incredible sensation! Bart Doerfler, Creative Director, will share his experience of the developing process of this new Holiday on Ice production.
This week has been thrilling: casting the final few members of Speed. The dancers are the final few and we have possibilities from Canada, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Berlin. Looking forward to the final line-up! This has been a great casting process as the cast is thrilled with this new 'edge'... yay!
Big steps this week in getting ready for SPEED rehearsals. The recording sessions with the orchestra and our amazing musical director Stephen Emmer were completed! The music is so exciting and now it is time to start vocal recording sessions in Germany, Holland, and Las Vegas. This is my favorite part as we put the soul into the sound and each track really becomes musically defined.
This has been a big week preparing for SPEED. We have had vocal recordings with
headliners Lorena Peril and Bobby Black in Las Vegas, casting a few more dancers in Holland, and costume shops in Paris working around the clock to get ready for first fittings. (Cynthia Nordstrom, our costume designer out of New York is thrilled to bring this wild fashion vibe to the show...!). One more week and I head to Utrecht permanently until the opening...woohoo!
So here I go! Packing up and leaving Vegas to head to Utrecht for the duration until the world premiere in Hamburg. This is the icing time in my mind, as the show has been under construction for over a year and we are now getting to put all the exciting touches to it. The cast, skaters, sets, etc are all coming together now...
Here we go... Well it is Monday here and the soundtrack is unbelievable. Truly an emotional ride in every way and with our new sound system it will be sooooo powerful! They are setting ice and we get to start on Wednesday on skates...I can't wait
Wow...what a great two days on the ice with my amazing choreographer Simone Grigorescu and Lisa McKinnon our performance manager. Seeing the show put to skates is so thrilling and we are laughing so much, we have such a fun time creating. We will be working everyday until next Thursday mapping out the numbers and preparing for our line captains to come soon.
On ice now for 6 days and it feels so great to be seeing choreography. Our line captains started officially today so a few more bodies always helps and we also had a very successful press launch in with myself and video host from the show Mirjam Weichselbaum in Hamburg on Monday...so things are moving FAST. Especially with the announcement that Sarah Conner will be singing two songs in the show with video...Exciting!
HOLIDAY ON ICE
Production "SPEED"
Tour 2011/2012 Germany & France
www.holidayonice.com
7 sep 2011
MEHDI RIOS
Mehdi Rios, who died on August 19 aged 66, was a circus performer for nearly four decades, and with his brother Michel was regarded as the greatest exponent of the acrobatic art known as the Icarian Games.
The Icarian Games is a two-man act thought to have been performed at Philp Astley's circus in London as early as 1777. The bearer lies in a "trinka" cradle, and propels with his feet a partner in a series of gymnastic leaps and bounds.
The act is both strenuous on the legs of the bearer and even more telling on the back of the "voltigeur"; when performed with grace and elegance, however, it can be one of the most attractive circus or vaudeville skills.
Mehdi Rios Lahoussine was born on June 9 1945 in Germany to a Moroccan father, Djamaa ben Lahoussine, and a German mother. Michel was his elder by three years. Their father directed a talented team of whirlwind Arabian tumblers and acrobats in leading circuses, and the boys eventually joined this act. When they grew up Michel took German nationality, and Mehdi Moroccan, but both later lived in France.
When Michel was 14 and Mehdi 11, their father – who had already trained them in tumbling – analysed their respective talents and sent them to complete their circus education with the instructor Augusto Lesi at the Gymnase de la Cité du Midi, in France.
While still working with their father's big troupe, the two brothers practised the Icarian Games for years, two or three hours daily, eventually perfecting their own act.
This they premiered at the Cirque d'Hiver-Bouglione in Paris on February 15 1958, performing a miraculous set of 30 somersaults. Mehdi was the only performer in the world who could be projected into the air in a "pirouette-rattrapé" manoeuvre and then land on just one foot.
Before long they had become the leading exponents of their craft, playing in front of huge audiences across Europe. In 1963 and 1964 they were featured at the Moulin Rouge; soon they were stars in New York, at the Radio City Music Hall, delivering four gruelling performances a day, seven days a week. But their principal home was at the Lido in Paris, where they performed for more than 25 years.
It was also at the Lido that Mehdi met his wife to be, a fellow artiste, Iris Toddy, who starred at the cabaret in an ice skating number with her brother, Gunner. The Toddys had started out as child acrobats from Germany, and went on to win the pairs competition at the World Professional Figure Skating Championships at Jaca, Spain, in 1974.
In the mid-1990s, after four decades, the brothers retired from performing and, with their wives, created a successful theatrical production company, Rios Productions. Based in Paris, Rios Productions packaged touring variety shows and revues, in the Lido style, which appeared in nightclubs, casinos and variety theatres all over the world.
After his funeral, a memorial service was held for Mehdi Rios at the Cirque d'Hiver-Bouglione, the setting for the Rios Brothers' debut performance. He is survived by his brother, and by his wife and their daughter, Nathalie, who also became a circus performer.
1 sep 2011
HOLIDAY ON ICE
The brand new spectacular show Speed will be an incredible sensation! Bart Doerfler, Creative Director, will share his experience of the developing process of this new Holiday on Ice production.
This has been a big week preparing for SPEED. We have had vocal recordings with headliners Lorena Peril and Bobby Black in Las Vegas, casting a few more dancers in Holland, and costume shops in Paris working around the clock to get ready for first fittings. (Cynthia Nordstrom, our costume designer out of New York is thrilled to bring this wild fashion vibe to the show...!). One more week and I head to Utrecht permanently until the opening.
HOLIDAY ON ICE
Production "SPEED"
Tour 2011/2012
Germany & France
www.holidayonice.com
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