On Tuesday, at Tianguis Turístico 2016, Daniel Lamarre, President and Chief Executive of Cirque du Soleil, announced that a new show, Luzia, will showcase Mexican culture and will be seen by 100 million spectators and 450 cities worldwide, reports Neil Steedman from Guadalajara, capital of Jarisco, Mexico.
Such a show will be a first for Cirque du Soleil and comes on top of the first Cirque du Soleil theme park, which will open next week in Nuevo Vallarta, Riviera Nayarit in Mexico, and which is expected to attract five million visitors a year. The park, in turn, follows the sold out show Joya that has been playing on the Riviera Maya in Yucatan, Mexico, since last November.
Luzia will undoubtedly encourage huge numbers of people around the world to want to visit Mexico over the coming years and help boost the country’s increasing visitor numbers, which reached 32.1 million in 2015, three million more than in 2014. Tourism earnings rose to a record M$17.457 billion, a 7.7% growth when compared to 2014 and a 20.1% growth when compared to 2013.
Daniel Lamarre said: “Cirque du Soleil created a new category of show and has grown from one to seven shows over the past 22 years – and some 4.5 million attend our shows in Las Vegas, or around 10% of visitors to the city. Now we have developed an amazing partnership with Mexico and our new Mexican culture-themed show, Luzia: A Waking Dream of Mexico, will be the first Cirque du Soleil show to showcase a country. It will become a major attraction and we have a target of five million visitors a year.
“The show will be the first to use water in a water screen that can reflect the different rains in Mexico, from light to torrential, and all the water will be recycled.
Also, a giant circle will portray the sun, moon and the Aztec calendar, while our research and development department has created mechanisms that can make flowers on a singer’s dress suddenly open.”
The first Luzia show opens next week in Montreal, Canada.
