Las Vegas’ latest attraction has audiences on their feet, ready to move. The immersive Discoshowdirected by Steven Hoggett and choreographed by Yasmine Lee, celebrates the revolutionary beginnings of disco in New York nightlife in the 1970s. The 70-minute Spiegelworld production on the Las Vegas Strip, in collaboration with Caesars Entertainment, features a soundtrack time-specific sound and an ever-changing dance that extends across the multi-level space, with audience members watching and grooving alongside the performers.
Lee took a moment to explain how she used movement to help tell the Discoshowthe history of artistic expression.
What research did you do for this production?
The show takes place in the early days of disco, when it was still an underground movement. We draw from the pre-commercialization of disco, before Studio 54, when the founders were developing the style. They were brown, Latinx, black, gay New Yorkers, and single women. I think what’s really delicious about disco is that it’s a true expression of self. What ends up in the performance space is 100% made by the humans we made it with.
How did the energy flow from rehearsals to performances, when everyone was able to interact with the audience?
Before we opened in Vegas, we did a workshop version of it in New York, which allowed us to test some ideas and see how the audience behaves and reacts or not. I felt that the New York audience was a little different from the Las Vegas audience. There was still much to learn.
How has the show evolved with the different audiences present in the room?
When you step onto a dance floor – when those rhythms, lyrics and melodies hit your body and soul – you are invited to be yourself. Even in auditions, I felt the pure joy of people being together in their bodies in a room on a dance floor. So, in that sense, little to nothing has changed, because that innate joy of getting high on a dance floor is something that was present in all of these artists from the beginning.
What is your main takeaway from the process?
We need each other and people want to be together. Being at the center of this show and watching people leave the room changed from when they entered has been incredible.
