Las Vegas' Bellagio Fountains Learn New Dances

LAS VEGAS, Dec. 17, 2011 -- In a suite at the Bellagio, Claire Kahn pulls out pages with hand-written lyrics to Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, each line accompanied by her sketches of how the resort's famed dancing fountains could bring it to life.

Picture yourself in a boat by the river/With tangerine trees and marmalade skies…

Then she powers up her Mac and shows an outline of the Bellagio's man-made lake plus step-by-step images of how the Beatles hit might play out on the fountains. Now she's choreographing to the music "like an animated storyboard," she explains.

For the first time in six years, The Fountains of Bellagio — the Strip's most famous free attraction — will add new songs to their repertoire. Lucy, Michael Jackson's Billie Jean and the '40s Glenn Miller hit In the Mood are due to debut starting next week. To the thousands who watch day and night from the Las Vegas Boulevard sidewalk or on Bellagio room TVs, the shows — typically every 15 minutes at night, 30 minutes in the afternoon and early evening — may seem like simple narrative pyrotechnics.

Water, lights and 'shooters'

In fact, choreographing a song on the fountains is "capturing the spirit (of the song) rather than being literal," says Kahn, 56. It may take a week just to get two minutes to her satisfaction, says the executive designer for the California-based WET firm. The Stanford University design major and two teammates have been creating Bellagio fountain extravaganzas since the resort's 1998 opening, and her spurting depiction of the poignant Sarah Brightman/Andrea Bocelli hit Con Te Partirò (Time to Say Goodbye), is one of the more crowd-pleasing of the fountains' current 29-song repertoire.

Kahn, a brunette dressed in a sweatshirt and brown Lapland headband in preparation for testing Lucy on the fountains on a cold Friday evening, passionately explains her creative process. She has been designing songs for the Bellagio fountains since the hotel's first owner, Steve Wynn, decreed that the resort should have the biggest, best and most romantic display on the Strip. He nixed colored lights for the fountains in favor of more elegant white ones, Kahn says.

She started her current task by listening to Lucy over and over, followed by a few weeks of work on WET's proprietary computer program that simulates the fountains, "so we can essentially sketch the choreography offsite," she explains. She and her partners are turning the other two songs — chosen by Bellagio executives from a list submitted by WET — into jaw-dropping Vegas-worthy productions.

The set is an 8½-acre body of water, illuminated at night by about 5,000 lights. The players are 798 "minishooters," 208 swaying "oarsmen," 192 "super shooters" and 16 "extreme shooters" capable of gushing nearly 500 feet in the air. Each fountain can be programmed, and Kahn knows their various quirks. A fog system also helps designers create moods.