Cirque Du Soleil

The Los Angeles City Council is weighing a plan to issue a $30-million loan that would allow the owner of the Hollywood & Highland shopping mall to retrofit a theater so it can house a decade of performances by Cirque du Soleil. CIM Group, which owns Hollywood & Highland but leases the Kodak Theatre within the mall, hopes to bring the acrobatic performances to the venue starting in 2011.

What do you get when you cross a Renaissance fair with a Las Vegas spectacle and a few hundred Roman gladiators, swashbuckling musketeers and marauding Vikings? The one-of-a-kind Puy du Fou historical theme park in the French countryside. PHOTOS: Puy du Fou historical theme park in France After three decades of entertaining audiences with live-action chariot races, sword fights and epic battles, France's Puy du Fou will be recognized on March 17 as a "classic" theme park by the Themed Entertainment Assn . during an awards ceremony at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim.

It's an old Hollywood story: a well-liked performer with a pretty face who just can't deliver the goods every time. In this case the performer is the Kodak Theatre, glamorous temple of the Academy Awards seen one night each year on television by millions of people. But on far too many other nights, the vast theater tucked into the Hollywood & Highland shopping center is dark and not generating revenues or taxes, its operators say.

So how large an undertaking is it to move one Cirque du Soleil show out of a theater? It's massive — but manageable with the right equipment and crew. Take a look at what it took: 16: Number of 53-foot semi-trailers used to move the sets 8,000: Number of person-hours spent moving 8 tons: The heaviest piece — the track-and-trolley bridge that hangs over the stage 27 feet: The tallest piece — the Empire State Building flat 1 millimeter: The smallest piece — Swarovski crystals appliquéd to a false eyelash 45,000: Square footage of plastic stretch wrap used 30: Number of road cases used to pack costumes, along with 16 racks 10: Road cases for wigs and makeup 126: Number of panels that make up "Iris" show deck — the scenically painted removable platform that covers the existing Kodak stage 5 square feet: Size of each show deck panel 5: Number of semi-trailers used to move show deck — Glenn Whipp

Cirque du Soleil says it loves the movies, and evidence suggests that the whimsical Montreal-based circus troupe isn't kidding. Cirque's latest show, "Iris," which opened last month at the Kodak Theatre to strong reviews, is an acrobatic mash note to cinematic marvels. Its French director, Philippe Decouflé, is an unabashed fan of Busby Berkeley musicals. The troupe's owner-founder, Guy Laliberté, keeps a home in the Hollywood Hills and counts director (and fellow Canadian) James Cameron among his friends.

Cirque du Soleil, the internationally known French-Canadian circus, will hold general auditions for future productions Monday and Tuesday in Irvine and other Southern California sites. The circus employs more than 1,250 people internationally, including 231 performers for four separate productions. Athletes and acrobats can jump and tumble their way into the circus with tryouts from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Monday at the Orange County Tumbling Academy, 15281 Barranca Parkway, Irvine.

Four fabulous ghosts hang around the brilliantly cluttered set of "Love," Cirque du Soleil's new pop-theatrical extravaganza, officially opening tonight in the revamped Siegfried & Roy Theatre at the Mirage hotel. Those jovial phantoms are the Beatles, whose music and social influence provide a story for the troupe's latest redefinition of the circus' big top.

Cirque du Soleil will mount a Las Vegas production based on Beatles music, replacing the Siegfried & Roy show at the Mirage hotel and casino in 2006, the partners in the project announced Thursday. Beatles producer George Martin will oversee the music. Neither of the surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, will perform, but they issued statements supporting the project, as did Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, the widows of John Lennon and George Harrison.

The big top has entered the Digital Age. This week, Columbia TriStar offers the DVD of the acclaimed Cirque du Soleil's magical "Quidam." The production was filmed in Amsterdam in April, after having toured the United States for three years. Directed by David Mallet, who did the recent "Cats" video, "Quidam" tells the story of a young girl who has seen it all and now believes the world has little to offer her.

It had all the trappings of a Hollywood red-carpet opening: a crush of journalists, free food and a carefully orchestrated buzz of anticipation. But the hullabaloo at the Kodak Theatre on Thursday morning was due not to the premiere of yet another superhero would-be blockbuster, but to the arrival of a new kid on Hollywood Boulevard: Cirque du Soleil. This summer, the Montreal-based entertainment behemoth will be launching a planned 10-year residence at the Kodak, where a posse of 75 acrobats, aerialists and clowns will perform Cirque's latest big-top extravaganza, the movie-themed "Iris.

In the two weeks it took Cirque du Soleil crew members to strike the sets, pack the costumes and remove every trace of evidence that the company and its resident show, "Iris," ever existed at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre, the most pressing questions didn't concern logistics or disassembly. After all, the $100-million production had been conceived with the knowledge that come each February of its anticipated 10-year stay, the show would have to decamp to make room for the Oscars. "The plan has been in place for months," says "Iris" technical director Kevin Kiely, surveying the organized chaos taking place on the Kodak's stage early in the moving process.

As Japan's preeminent graphic designer and art director in the 1970s and early '80s, Eiko Ishioka helped build her reputation by heading media campaigns for Parco, a major boutique shopping complex chain. But instead of focusing on fashion or other merchandise in ads, promotional posters and commercials, Ishioka sold Parco to the public with attention-grabbing, often sensual visual images. In one 15-second spot, a silver-haired British rake nonchalantly tosses his champagne glass overboard and makes his move on a dainty young Japanese woman.

The inspiration for Cirque du Soleil's new show, "Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour," began in the late 1980s when Michael Jackson hopped into a van (sans security) with his longtime attorney John Branca to see the French Canadian performance troupe for the first time in Santa Monica. The mega-pop star was fascinated by the avant-garde circus and asked to meet the cast backstage, said Branca, who was named co-executor of Jackson's estate along with music executive John McClain in accordance with Jackson's 2002 will.

Cirque du Soleil's tribute to the king of pop, " Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour," fuses visuals, dance and music to immerse audiences in the late pop star's creative inspirations. The show presents a fantasy-tinged take on the source of the performer's creativity as well as his love of music, dance, fairy tale and nature. Staples Center, 1111 S. Figueroa St., L.A. 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 4 p.m. Sun. $50-$175. staplescenter.com

MUSIC Wilco Over its 17-year career, Jeff Tweedy's band has gradually moved from roots rock to something a bit more nebulous, as though the bandleader were with each album further distancing himself from his whiskey bottle and Levis past. The band is having fun not only with sound but with structure on "The Whole Love," without sacrificing catchiness. Nearly every song contains some tangential surprise, odd hook, sonic back flip or mid-song redefinition. Hollywood Palladium, 6215 Sunset Blvd., L.A. 7 p.m. $45. livenation.com.

Dive into the Canadian circus and dance troupe Cirque du Soleil's latest fantastical world. "Ovo," meaning "egg" in Portuguese, presents a colorful ecosystem teeming with life, where insects work, eat, crawl, flutter, play, fight and look for love in a nonstop riot of energy and movement. Santa Monica Pier, 1550 Pacific Coast Highway, Santa Monica. 8 p.m. Tue.-Thu.; 4 and 8 p.m. Fri., Sat.; 1 and 5 p.m. Sun. Through March 20. $45-$145. http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/ovo

The first time Cirque du Soleil pitched its sky-blue-and-goldenrod-yellow big top on California soil, it was in Little Tokyo. The year was 1987; the targeted occasion, opening night of the Los Angeles Festival. According to Cirque founder-director Guy Laliberte, the entire future of the Montreal-based troupe was riding on that single show.

A month from now, when the lights dim on Cirque du Soleil's final performance in Orange County, the artists and crew of this popular Canadian circus will begin another well-rehearsed, but less public performance: packing up and moving on to the next city. The difficulties of living out of a suitcase are all too familiar to the 110 men and women in Cirque du Soleil's current production, "Saltimbanco."

Pity the rubes. Those wayward tourists who dawdle in their cars and tour buses along Beachwood Drive, enraging the locals as they haltingly seek that perfect Hollywood sign photo op - they know not what they do. Maybe you're not from this neighborhood either, but you have savvier Hollywood plans. They involve horse trails, hidden hotels, a magic castle, a monastery - and that's just a start. To close out our yearlong series of Southern California Close-Ups, here is a set of 10 Hollywood micro-itineraries, suitable for visitors from across town or across the planet.

In 1999, ABC-TV launched an advertising campaign for its fall season featuring striking yellow-and-black canvas banners hanging from city lamp poles and lining major city streets — including one across the street from CBS Studios in Studio City. Lampposts were becoming an increasingly common venue for commercial advertising at the time, and until CBS complained that it didn't have equal access to city property, other commercial ventures, such as the Dodgers and the Lakers, launched banner campaigns.