Cher said
farewell but not goodbye. Two and a half years after the
final show of her three-year Farewell concert tour,
the Oscar-, Emmy-, and Grammy
award-winner announced last week that she'd signed on
for a three-year, 200-show engagement at Caesars
Palace in Las Vegas.
Cher told AP
Television the move was no mere change of heart.
''Well, first of
all, there was going to be a big time between ending the
show, ending the tour, and going to Vegas,'' she said. ''I
wouldn't have to move. I wouldn't have to travel. I
could just stay there. Because that's what I really
can't do anymore, is I can't go on the road. It's just
too much. It's just too impossibly hard. And I started
there, and I thought that it might be fun.''
''Cher at the
Colosseum,'' set to debut May 6, will include 18 dancers,
aerialists, and new costumes designed by Cher's longtime
designer Bob Mackie. Choreography will be directed by
Doriana Sanchez, a veteran of the Do You Believe? and
Farewell tours. But don't expect the same old Cher
show.
''They have
technology that we've never seen before,'' she said. ''It's
like when you went to see The Phantom of the
Opera for the first time, and you saw the boat and the
candelabra and all that. We can do that stuff. I'm
fascinated with being able to do that.''
When it was
suggested she'd done little between the end of Farewell and
now -- no concerts, movies, or albums -- Cher laughed:
''Little? How about nothing?''
But now along
with the Vegas gigs, the 61-year-old is putting out an
all-new studio album, her first since 2001's Living
Proof. And she said she's still considering a
longtime offer to do a TV musical of Mame.
''You don't want
to stop if you can keep going,'' Cher said. ''I never
expected to be going this long. I have no idea how that
happened, but it did. It's like an artist -- it's
like, when was it time for Picasso to stop painting?
He had enough paintings, I'm sure, at a certain age.
Why didn't he just stop? I guess because he really liked it,
and it was some part of his life. You don't want to
give up some part of your life that's that
important.'' (AP)