The Circus Starring Britney Spears - Development

Development

In October 2008, Spears hired Wade Robson, who had previously worked as director for her Dream Within a Dream Tour, to direct the tour; he announced that rehearsals would start in January. His wife, Amanda Robson, was also hired as co-creative director. Andre Fuentes was chosen as the lead choreographer. However, on December 23, 2008, the Robsons and Fuentes were replaced due to unknown reasons by Jamie King, who previously collaborated with Spears in her Oops!... I Did It Again World Tour. He did the casting of the dancers and acrobats, and worked with Spears on the setlist and the choreography. King described the show saying it was "sexy, fun, explosive, and full of surprises. While avoiding such traditional circus elements as live animals, we've created something innovative and exciting using contortionists, dancers, lighting, fire and other special effects". Simon Ellis was hired as the musical director. The production design was done by Road Rage, a formed alliance between Nick Whitehouse, Bryan Leitch, William Baker and Steve Dixon. Lightning design was done by Visual Light, conformed by Whitehouse and Leitch. The stage was designed by Road Rage and set in-the-round, with a big stage in the center painted to look like a target. There were also two satellite stages in the sides unified by small catwalks, to resemble an actual three-ring circus. The stage was built by Tait Towers and included nine lifts, which had a cost of $10 million. It traveled in 3,000 rolling cases packed into 32 semis and a crew of 150 people was needed to set it up. There was a semi-transparent Element Labs Stealth cylinder screen above the stage, comprising 960 panels that Solotech built into custom frames. The backdrops were designed by Dirk Decooedt. There were three new film sequences shot exclusively for the tour: an opening video featuring Perez Hilton, a video of Spears set to Marilyn Manson's "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This" and a final montage. The three videos were created by Veneno. Props, including swings, couches, unicycles, stripper poles, a gold cage and giant picture frames, were designed by ShowFX Inc.; they also provided custom VIP couch seating that lined the perimeter of the stage. VYV provided the video control, which included two Photon Show media servers and two Photon Controllers. The servers took timecode for the show and wrapped the images around the Stealth screen. Emric Epstein of VYV explained, "The servers and software permits us to control a large number of video layers on the 360˚ LED screen, composite the layers in realtime, and transform the final output so that everything look seamless after going through the LED controllers. There is also an astounding 3D preview of the stage and video screens in the software so you can control or re-program the show without being inside the arena bowl".

The sound was provided by Solotech. Front of house engineer Blake Suib explained that, " and Solotech were asked to come up with a design that blocked the least amount of seats but provided the quality and coverage that expects and that we were looking for". The public address (PA) was made of 64 Milos that split into four hangs of 16 per hang. Two at the 50 yard line pointed one way and directly behind, two at the 50 yard line pointed the opposite way. Also present were 32 Micas; 16 per hang, pointing to the sides. Each one of the four hangs had its own equalization (EQ) and level control, so in case one of the speakers were louder there would be a separate EQ to compensate for any change in the tone due to the distance. All the components and tools used in the public address were designed by Meyer Sound Laboratories, including a software called Mapp, used to decide where to point the PA; the Simm, to analyze and time align the PA accurately; and the Galileo, used to EQ and balance all the sections of the PA. The speakers were self-powered with amplifiers also built by Meyer Sounds. There were 24 HP700 subwoofers positioned all over the arena floor, and the Simm and Galileo were used to time align. Spears used a Crown CM-311AE headset microphone wearing the mic's beltpack (usually hidden in color matching material) on her top or pants, she did not use in-ear monitors; instead 12 Meyer CQs were positioned, eight flown around the center ring and two on each of the smaller stages. Spears specifically asked Suib to make the show sound similar to a dance club. Solotech provided the lighting package, including a mostly Vari-Lite rig, with 80 each VL3000s and VL3500s in various positions, and 60 VL500s built into the stage deck. Whitehouse also had 18 PRG Bad Boy luminaires, 16 of which sat in pods that hung in various positions lower than the rest of the rig, with two more at either end of the stage. Each of the eight pods housed two Bad Boys, two of the VL3500s, one Robert Juliat Ivanhoe followspot with scroller under DMX control, and a Molefay. Fifty Martin Professional Atomic Color strobes and four front of house Robert Juliat Aramis followspots rounded out the lighting package. The lightning team had to rehearse for a month to prepare. The tour was also the first to use the touring version of the PRG Virtuoso V676 console to control the system, which was used from the beginning of the European leg until the end of the tour. Pyrotechnics and jets of smoke used in the show were created by Lorenzo Cornacchia of Pyrotek Special Effects and Tait Towers.

Spears explained that since she did not tour to promote Blackout, she was excited about having to include songs from that album into the setlist. The finished setlist would include three songs from Circus, six songs from Blackout and five songs from In the Zone (2003); other parts of the setlist consist of a medley of "Breathe on Me" and "Touch of My Hand", both from In the Zone; and a remix of "...Baby One More Time", the only song performed off the album of the same name (1998). "Everytime" was the only song not included in the released setlist but was performed regularly on the show. Magician Ed Alonzo joined Spears in one of the acts, and she played as his assistant. Alonzo stated, "We're going to be doing the classics of magic but a little high-tech. We'll be doing a little dissection, transposition, a vanish, an appearance — and if I do a trick, she doesn't just hold the props, she's actually getting inside the big boxes or I am slicing her up. ... Some of it's pretty scary, but she gets right in there with no reservations." The costumes were designed by Dean and Dan Caten from DSquared2. They recreated classic circus outfits, like clowns, jugglers and trapeze artists in a more provocative way. They commented that,

"We are enormous fans of Britney, and have been waiting for the perfect moment to collaborate with her. It's going to be wild. We wanted to create something much more provoking and indecent ... something animalistic and primal. We are confident that this tour partnership, an autobiographical tribute for one who has always been in the spotlight: scrutinized, watched, imitated, photographed, criticized and loved, will be an enormous success".

The costumes of the first segment were selected to show a metamorphosis. The cheetah headdress represented an animal. The jacket and whip represented both a ringmaster and a lion tamer. She took the headdress off at the end of the first song to reveal a Swarovski-crystal corset, fishnets, and boots and entered the cage to represent a slave. The wardrobe for the song "Mannequin" included black jeans from True Religion and a yellow tank top with rhinestones designed by Spears herself. Spears's outfits had a duplicate set in case of any problem and were numbered in sequence. The total number of costumes was approximately 350, kept in order by six full–time women. The wardrobe was also revealed to have $150,000 worth of Swaroski crystals.