“I’ve been on the road since I was 17, so it’ll be nice to be settled a little bit,” says Miranda Lambert, whose Velvet Rodeo opens at Planet Hollywood’s Zappos Theater in September. Organized into discrete acts with distinctive visual themes, Piece of Me used huge props, multiple glam costume changes and impeccably staged and executed choreography to reestablish Spears as a great entertainer.įor the right artist, residencies are a creative and logistical dream because they offer the rare chance to perform regularly for a consistent audience without travel. “Britney coming in such a big way when she was still incredibly relevant - I knew at the time that she would open doors, that people would think: ‘Sh-t, well, Britney did it …’ ” recalls Baz Halpin, the show’s creative director, who now runs the production and design agency Silent House. The era of the new-school residency arguably began in 2013 with Britney Spears’ Piece of Me. Over the past decade, the Vegas artist residency has gone from a career death knell to a transformative flex for established artists like Usher, who have catalogs so stacked they can easily sustain a 90-minute show. For the creative director of a pop star’s Las Vegas residency, though, this is just another day at the office.
VIMEO MY WAY USHER HOW TO
(Yes, he is the grandson of Broadway lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II.) His current role required him to weigh in on a list of last-minute issues: fine-tuning the automated time codes that coordinate the action, cleaning up the staging for “this kind of skate ballet” and figuring out how to fit more “Ush Bucks” into Usher’s shoes so the singer could make it rain during a strip-club sequence.
It would still be a long next 36 hours for Hammerstein, 44, who came up in the downtown New York theater scene and is best known for co-founding The Box, an intimate nightclub with vaudevillian, burlesque and other outré entertainments. “All right,” Hammerstein declared, “we’ve got an ending.” Mars cued up the track and the cast went through the motions of the number, grouping up to perform in unison the club moves Lil Jon calls out at the song’s end: the A-Town Stomp, the Muscle, the Rockaway.
“We’re having a fight.” He explained what he wanted: a song that would effectively take advantage of the 23 dancers, roller skaters and pole dancers onstage and feel like “the choreographic version of a high-five … and then end with lasers and walk out to more lasers.” “Aakomon, perfect timing!” said Hammerstein. Twenty minutes later, though, his enthusiasm had dimmed, and he returned to an earlier choice: Usher’s dancefloor hit “Yeah!”Īakomon Jones, Usher’s personal overall creative director, slid onto a stool next to Hammerstein. “Mars just solved it!” Hammerstein exclaimed. So Mars suggested “Good Love,” Usher’s recent summer collaboration with City Girls.
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