LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Cirque du Soleil's KÀ is celebrating two decades in the Las Vegas valley this year.
It's one of Cirque's grandest productions, and I got a special look behind the scenes to see what sets it apart.
WATCH: Cirque du Soleil's KÀ celebrates 20 years in Las Vegas
Night after night, a story unfolds in the theater, and it's not often the stage itself is considered a character.
Company manager Cathy Poochigian-Pratt tells me it's almost one of the stars of the show.
"It's a 50x25 foot platform. It rotates. It spins. It has 80 steel pegs that pop out of it so the artists use it as acrobatic handholds," she said. "The theater is unlike anything else."
The 50-ton stage — and the talent who grace it — have been dazzling audiences in Cirque du Soleil's KÀ for 20 years now.
"This is now one of the longest-running Cirque shows here in Vegas. What do you think has contributed to the longevity of the show?" I asked.
"I think just the camaraderie, artistry. I mean, we have some elements in the show that no other Cirque show has, no other show in the world has," Poochigian-Pratt said. "We really do cater to everybody."
She used her family as an example of how the show can mean different things to different people.
"I have a three and a seven-year-old. They're obsessed with the show. They love the show so much. I have an 80-year-old uncle who is super impressed by the mechanics behind the show, the technology behind the show, how we intertwine the technology with the artistic elements," Poochigian-Pratt explained. "Then, I've got my 70-year-old mother who is deaf and can't hear anything. She uses American Sign Language to communicate. So to watch her watch the show, know we don't really have a specific language. It's not English. It's not Spanish. It's Cirquish. It's really cool to be able to cater to the masses."
It takes the largest cast and crew of any Cirque show to put this $165 million production on — 250 people. A majority of them make up the technical crew.
"We have a day crew that comes in around 6 o'clock in the morning every day, and they are doing maintenance checks on everything from harnesses to wire rope to the stage to the mechanics behind it," Poochigian-Pratt said. "We have a team that comes in at 6, and actually, our crew stays until midnight. The last crew stays until midnight, and that's our wardrobe team."
They use innovative elements like debuting touchscreen technology two years before touchscreen cellphones became popular in 2007, following the release of the iPhone, according to Cirque.
Some examples of other artists that are now using similar technology include country superstar Carrie Underwood, who used a platform with pegs for the final number of her Las Vegas residency, Reflection, at Resorts World.
Lady Gaga recently performed at Coachella, and she used the same type of cork that the KÀ crew uses for the beach scene during the show.
It's all to bring a powerful story to life.
"We are truly a narrative-based show," Poochigian-Pratt told me. "We have twins. They get separated. One gets taken off by the bad guys. One goes with the good guys, and they're trying to find each other in the end."
She says most Cirque shows are based on a loose narrative. But perhaps more than any of them, KÀ — at its core — is a story, from start to finish.
What stands out to Poochigian-Pratt is one specific part involving shadow puppets, which harkens back to one of the simplest forms of storytelling.
"What a lot of our guests don't understand is when the creators, when they decided on that act, they really wanted guests to witness the original form of storytelling, and that's what our show is. We're telling you a story."
KÀ recently expanded its schedule to include earlier weekend performances, at 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, with Monday through Wednesday shows continuing at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. nightly.