In 2013, Cirque du Soleil made a bold entry to the nightclub circuit with LIGHT at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas. LIGHT would feature world-famous DJ’s in an immersive mind-bending universe populated by more than twenty acrobats, dancers, and unique characters. Wanting to create a club experience unlike anything that’s come before, Cirque brought Moment Factory on board to design and produce video content for the more than 10 million pixels installed floor to ceiling and beyond. The expectation was that visiting DJ’s could customize a visual tone to match the vibe of their set, so our team’s main challenge was how to illustrate music with intensity so that the video content appeared cohesive with the music.
No matter where they are in the club, patrons are fully immersed in a spectacular display of performance, lighting, sound, and projection design, all carefully crafted toward a live and custom experience. To achieve this, the Moment Factory team created and continues to add to a vast repertoire of visual ambiences that can be layered in infinite combinations to move with and enhance the music. We also developed custom graphic environments for Skrillex, Axwell, Nicky Romero, Ingrosso, Alesso, and Zedd. We contributed to the club’s overall multimedia design with a DJ booth under a mosaic of LED screens and two large interactive projection walls. Known as ‘Acrowalls,’ acrobats perform live between layers of projection screens where they interact with visual content. The screens also sense both the movement and body heat of the performers, blending performance with content to create a sublime mirage.
Throughout the process, we worked closely with Cirque du Soleil to find the nightclub’s visual identity. The search took an interesting turn when we experimented with blending Cirque du Soleil’s traditional with a nightclub world. We were inspired by the idea of a Cirque du Soleil after-party: dark, sexy, and mysterious, telling its story with statement moments and trompe d’oeil graphics set off the club’s architecture. Guests encounter live Cirque du Soleil performers in an exhilaratingly dark circus. This experience, paired with cutting-edge, intelligent, and versatile content, leaves LIGHT set to rule the Las Vegas night.
