‘La Perle’ in Dubai: ‘A little piece of eternity’

A media preview of La Perle, a theatrical aquatic show created by artistic mastermind Franco Dragone, took place on Wednesday evening in Dubai.

The spectacle, which is performed on a dry and wet stage, involved acrobatics and visual illusions to tell a story tinged with flavours of the UAE.

La Perle, located in a purpose-built venue near the W Hotel in Al Habtoor City, feels intimate despite its ambitious scale; 1,300 seats wrap around a circular stage, which has a deep body of water at its centre.

During a 15-minute preview, trained acrobats flew from one end of the theatre to the other, practically touching the audiences at points.

“It’s like driving a spaceship,” said Dragone, who comes from a Cirque du Soleil background, about how it feels to pull off something like La Perle.

“For the hour-and-a-half [production] we do, we can heal some souls. We are dreamers. We call it entertainment, but we hope it’s something more — a little piece of eternity,” he added.

The show will take place twice a day, five days a week, all year long in Dubai. Tickets, starting from Dh400 and going up to Dh1,600, are available online.

The first La Perle show will take place on August 31.