How Cirque du Soleil helped build modern Las Vegas
LAS VEGAS — The water is its own world. One and a half million gallons rest behind 11 panes of 4-inch-thick glass in a warren below the stage where Cirque du Soleil's "O" plays at the Bellagio. This is the lighting tunnel — and when the 25th anniversary show begins in a few hours, spotlights will flood the water through these windows, highlighting the breathtaking acrobatics taking place above and below its surface.
It's a warm afternoon, but the theater is chilly as Russian swing performer and strongman John Maxson explains the complex mechanics of the pool, which remains a revolutionary build to this day.
Four mainstage hydraulic lifts can move the stage from 17 feet below the surface of the water to 18 inches above it. Instead of regular hydraulic fluid, food-grade vegetable oil fills the hydraulic cylinders powering the "O" lifts — so they don't contaminate the water in case of a leak. The pool itself is 25 feet deep, but pits for the cylinders extend another 25 feet below that. The pool is drained into the massive lake in front of the Bellagio Hotel and Casino once a year for maintenance, causing the water around the iconic dancing fountains to rise a full inch.
Maxson — his face and bald head elaborately painted, his muscled body sturdy and poised, his posture still impeccable — was among the original 85 performers who opened "O" in 1998.
He said the performers had no idea what they were
