Sizzling Details on Light Club, the Cirque du Soleil Nightclub Coming to Mandalay Bay

A levitating DJ booth and Cirque du Soleil performers dangling in front of clouds of smoke are highlights of a multi-tier re-invention of a standard nightclub experience going on at Mandalay Bay. Heavy on innovative lighting and theatrical content, Cirque du Soleil and The Light Group have joined forces to fill the former Rumjungle space and have penciled an opening in spring 2013.

Their concept, provisionally titled Light Club, sustains a dominant focus on Cirque's particular style of performance in a 47,918-square-foot club setting. Capacity is estimated to top out at 2,249 people, but with less of an emphasis on the dance floor than the spectacle that fills the place, a continually shifting visual environment to be viewed at different levels and locations within the venue.

The temporary name of Light Club is appropriate. Enormous LED screens cover the space's primary focus, one huge wall that houses the DJ and the main performance platforms for the Cirque team. Above, the ceiling features hanging shards of reflective mirrors to create a look of shattered glass. The DJ booth will rise up from the floor amid the huge wall of LED lights. It continues a sure-to-grow trend of moving booths, most recently introduced at the Pacha club in Ibiza.

Guests enter on the casino floor level and turn right to walk up a curved staircase to the lowest section. A separate private VIP entrance and corridor leads behind the DJ booth to VIP seating facing out onto the 840-square-foot dance floor. Above the casino floor, accessed by latticed walkways, is the Club Level, containing two additional smaller tiers, each six steps higher than the last.

Upholstered banquettes and more than 60 tables reside in this largest section of the club. The next tier, the Mezzanine, is on the same level as the performer catwalks and allows customers to look down on the scene below  A 47-foot bar dominates a wall on this floor.

The mood is club-meets-theater with all areas stressing a focus on the LED screens, platforms and floating performers, but the look is colder and more industrial than usual Cirque productions. Cocktail tables, banquettes and chandeliers are custom designed. Dramatic red chandeliers are based on a sacred geometry pattern, known as the flower of life. Metallic finishes abound. Fleur-de-lis tin panels, pennies affixed to tiles and a back bar design made of chicken wire make up some of the other design elements.

This contrasts with lush carpets, fabrics in flame and brick, sapphire, gold and deep red leathers. A custom ornate, red paisleylike design is used for some carpets and that visual extends to a similar look on very large wall coverings.

While the DJ floats up and down, the main focus will be on the Cirque troupe. Two winches on either side of the stage area will lower and raise the talent. Any Cirque performance is far more involved than your usual go-go dance routine, so much so that a designated warm-up/training room is being built for backstage.

In the club, performers will be working in front of an "acrobatic wall" created from two clear layers to be filled with theatrical smoke. Light will dance off this floating landscape and shadows of the performers will be projected onto this shifting cloud backdrop. Rigging for props and scenery that hangs down is also being installed.

Once the physical structures are in place, the range of visual looks can be explored, such as a proposed raindrop effect. No word on whether a central theme or narrative has been scripted for the club, but the opening of a Pandora's Box of light and sound is suggested by early sources.
—Bradley Martin
· Mandalay Bay Lands a New Cirque-Themed Nightclub [~ELV~]