Shania Twain appears with one of two horses used for her live Las Vegas show "Shania: Still The One." (Photo by Denise Truscello)
AEG Live’s John Meglen has one of the best pitch lines in the music business. In his quest to find superstars to headline residency shows at his Colosseum at Caesars Palace, the President and Co-CEO of AEG’s Concerts West division has an enticing rhetorical lure he likes to dangle in front of artists.
“I simply tell them ‘You know that show you’ve always dreamt of doing? Well that’s the show I want you to do,’” explained Meglen, who since 2003 has generated over $800 million in ticket sales in the palace first built for Celine Dion, and later home to Elton John, Cher and Bette Midler.
Meglen is the pioneer behind the Vegas residency model — over the top productions with superstar artists that save production dollars by eliminating travel costs and providing Caesars Palace with the distinction of being the only place in the world where fans can see artists like Shania Twain. The Canadian superstar is the first country show at the Colosseum — halfway into her two-year contract, Shania: Still the One is averaging about $475,000 per show for the 4,148 capacity venue, with $18.1 million in reported grosses for her first run of 36 shows through June 1. Her current 22-show run that began Oct. 11 and runs through Dec. 14 should easily push total revenue past the $25-million mark.
“This current run is based around a number of country events,” including the Professional Bull Riders World Finals and the National Finals Rodeo, both being held at the nearby Thomas & Mack Center, Meglen explained.
“We create a show you can’t do anywhere else,” he said. “It’s far too intricate and large so it can’t travel, but that allows the artist to go further with creativity,” explained Meglen.
For Twain, that creativity includes advancements in projection mapping technology — director Raj Kapoor pioneered a new method of projecting images onto moving objects, the first time it’s been done for a live performance. The result is a constantly changing environment where sidewalls, stage facades and the Colosseum’s 109-foot HD LED screen continually morph the audience into new environments.
“Projection is used in a very graphic manner with lots of movement and color and fun,” said Kapoor, who pioneered Carrie Underwood’s projection dress during the 2013 Grammys and brought much of that technological know-how to the Twain show. During one sequence, Twain points at the audience and confetti explodes from above and is mimicked with a timed projection that gives the illusion of confetti exploding outward from the walls.
“You have this surprising color burst that appears out of nowhere and creates a bigger and better experience with the audience,” Kapoor said. “Shania wanted to meld all the worlds, creating a concert with theatrical elements you only do in Las Vegas.”
Not only will fans be able to see and hear Twain but, through the use of timed aromatherapy, they’ll be able to smell her, too.
“She wants the show to be very multidimensional — when she walked in the room, she wanted to create an interaction with the audience that was both sexy and feminine,” Kapoor said. In total, four custom fragrances were created for her performance, each timed to spray during a high moment in the concert.
The 100-minute, 18-song performance is a journey through Twain’s career with sequences that track her rise onto the country scene as well as her love of horses — one riding sequence had to be filmed on a massive green screen to capture Twain on one of her horses. While the country star has confirmed that she has been working on a new album over the last year (her first since 2002), Shania: Still the One is a collection of her greatest hits, and Kapoor said a renewed interest in country music’s leading ladies makes her material relevant to a new generation of fans.
“Country music is more popular than ever and Shania’s brand really speaks to that,” Kapoor said. “She was one of the first people who pushed country and pop together, paving the way for artists like Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood, who would go on to push the boundaries of country music. We had to build the show around her greatest hits and she knew people wanted to hear them because she hadn’t been in the spotlight for 10 years.”
Interviewed for this story: Raj Kapoor, (323) 933-7339; John Meglen, (323) 930-5706