I first visited Las Vegas in 1988. In the heat of the desert city, I was holed up in the Convention Centre for a week, modelling fur coats. In its own way, my brief sojourn was a reflection of the contradictions that make Las Vegas what it is - a city where Siberian fur is modelled in 90 degrees of heat and where gay bars exist alongside shops selling Catholic iconography. It's a city of plunging necklines and rhinestone crucifixes, where night becomes day in 24-hour casinos and where clocks are rarer than a sunny day in London.
When Christopher Bruce recently asked me to choreograph a piece for Rambert Dance Company, of which he is artistic director, my travels in Vegas came back to haunt me. America has been a constant theme in my work over the past few years and I have been particularly inspired by the lyrical writings of Tennessee Williams. I was keen to see if the universal human truths that Williams addresses in his work had found a place in arguably America's most manufactured and made-over city.
And so, Vegas found its way into The Celebrated Soubrette - my new piece for Rambert. In Michael Daugherty's clever, witty score, Le Tombeau de Liberace, I found a voice for my musings.
I wanted to choreograph something unapologetically grand and at times tragic. Daugherty's music, and the man it was inspired by - a one-man walking Las Vegas - fitted the bill perfectly. One image seemed to stick in my mind: what would the atmosphere have been like if Williams had actually met Liberace?
This potentially disastrous chemical cocktail became the starting point for The Celebrated Soubrette. Las Vegas provided the heat which would bring the mixture to the boil. In an attempt to capture the essence of the city and inject this fantasy with some stark reality, I made a two-day visit to Las Vegas earlier this year.
Day 1
Much has changed in Las Vegas over the past 10 years. On my first visit, I landed in the desert. Today, the airport is just off Vegas's central strip. A huge shimmering pyramid rises into the sky. This is my hotel.
4am: I'm jet-lagged. I look out of my window. To my left are replicas of the Empire State and Chrysler buildings. Straight ahead is a pastel recreation of Camelot. The Eiffel Tower is just around the corner.
6am: Breakfast. The Luxor is probably the only hotel in the world where you breakfast in the midst of a full-scale archaeological excavation (although the "artefacts" bear an uncanny, if fractured, resemblance to the kitsch "Egyptian" statues in the casino). "Hi, I'm Linda. What can I dig for you?" asks my waitress.
8am: I meet up with James P Reza, editor of the Time Out Guide to Las Vegas and that rare breed in the city - a native Las Vegan. Our first stop is the Glass Pool Inn, one of Vegas's few remaining 1950s buildings. It's a style of architecture that I am particularly drawn to.
Much of my work relates to the creation and destruction of geometric shapes. Similar themes run through the carved curves of these elegant, strangely futuristic edifices. Over the past 10 years, the original 1950s Las Vegas casinos have largely been "imploded", and only a small number of motels and even fewer original bars remain. I ask James why this is. "They don't make money," he replies. In their place now stand modern buildings masquerading as ancient or classical architecture (but with added fairy lights and a shorter shelf life).
Lunchtime: I'm at the Liberace Museum. "Do you like my costume? You should. You paid for it." Liberace knew which side his bread was buttered and a visit to his museum only confirms that while he knew what money could buy, he never forgot who put it in his pocket. Diamond jewels are displayed side-by-side with small throw-away china dogs; a gold encrusted piano shares the stage with one made by a fan from 200,000 toothpicks.
I spot a photograph of a poster advertising an early show starring Liberace and the "voice of Barbra Streisand". Liberace supposedly said of her that "what she hadn't discovered about showbusiness was the value of glamour. It almost seems as if she'd never even heard the word." I find myself warming to the man even more. We are met by the new curator of the Liberace Museum, 25-year-old anthropologist Brian Paco Alvarez. Paco (whose motto is "It's not just a label, it's an idea") shows us behind the scenes. Paco's enthusiasm for Liberace is purely personal - he used to see him shopping as a child and Liberace always said "Hi". His mother couldn't be more pleased if Paco had become President.
But, all is not well at the Liberace Museum. Brian's predecessor has left things in quite a state. Some of Liberace's precious costumes are stored in the bathroom. I take an exclusive pee in Liberace's personal toilet and note that clearly his love of candelabras was not just a stage act. On my way out, I buy a moving-image pen. Liberace floats in a dream car between two candelabras as I write.
Evening: Like the 50s architecture, old-fashioned Las Vegas showgirls are a dying breed. Those still working look like they've been at it a long time. I decide to head for Bally's Casino to see Jubilee! There are two shows each evening: the midnight show is topless; at 9.30pm, the girls tie a bit of sparkly ribbon across their top half.
I decide to be daring and go for the late show. And, what a show. The sinking of the Titanic, complete with rictus smiles, lingerie and a high-kicking American Pie finale has the woman next to me in tears. The effects are fantastic, but beneath the sparkles, you can see that for these women, its just a job. I wonder what will happen to them when Jubilee's lights go out forever?
Day 2
3am: Time to get up. The same people are in the same position in the timeless casino.
10am: We head out for the desert, which puts Vegas into sharp focus. Tennessee Williams said: "We are all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skin, for life!" I realise that this could apply as strongly to Vegas itself - a floating island in a sea of dust - as to any living person.
Lunchtime: Shopping at The Forum mall at Caesar's Palace. At the Gucci roman temple, I'm short on cash and time. "Don't worry," says the shop assistant, "everything will still be here when you come back from the casino." Money talks in Vegas, but I suppose it's consoling to know that if you don't have any, your fortune could just be a slot machine away.
Evening: I meet up with James P Reza and his girlfriend Stacey. I'd given up hope of finding anything of Williams's spirit in Vegas, and then in walks Stacey. She used to be stripper, but is now setting up as a hairdresser. She stripped because she loved it and recently fulfilled her adolescent fantasy of stripping on New Orleans' Bourbon Street. The name of her chosen bar? Big Daddy's (after Brick's father in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof).
Stacey is smart, sexy, seemingly frail but tough as nails - the quintessential Williams heroine - and she's sitting opposite me. This is what I've been looking for. She's my celebrated soubrette, and I'm dying to tell the Rambert dancers. Time to go home.
Rambert Dance Company's The Celebrated Soubrette is at Sadler's Wells, London EC1 (020 7863 8000) from November 21-25 and the Plymouth Theatre Royal (01752 267 222) from November 29 to December 2. A documentary by Matthew Springford on the making of The Celebrated Soubrette will be shown on Artsworld - a new digital channel - on Christmas Eve
