There is perhaps no better place in the world to understand the happy incongruity and wash of relief captured in the term “oasis” than standing before the plumes and undulations that spray from the 1,203 nozzles of the Fountains of Bellagio. In Las Vegas, where the bursts dance to Rachmaninov, Old Blue Eyes, and Bruno Mars—Handel and Placido Domingo for the holidays—the showpiece attraction of MGM Hotels’ Bellagio Las Vegas convincingly advances, to a zenith of 460 feet, the idea that the city’s signature element is not neon but water.
Something else that boggles the mind about Vegas in general and the Bellagio in particular: The fountains are only the welcome mat. Step inside and the truisms about Vegas—land where hope springs eternal and rainstorms are as few and far between as a bad time—reveal a city surprisingly in touch with the natural world.
nside the resort, in a 1.5-million-gallon pool, divers and synchronized swimmers who once competed for their native Brazil, Japan, Russia, or the U.S. in Olympic Games now mesh fluidly in the aquatic spectacle of “O” by Cirque du Soleil. Twice a night, the show offers the opportunity to watch performers break the surface and explore the depths of our primal connection to water.
“It sustains life, it supports birth—we can’t live without it,” Sandi Croft, artistic director of “O” says of the show’s star attraction. (The show’s title derives from the pronunciation of eau, French for water.)
“It sustains life, it supports birth—we can’t live without it,” Sandi Croft, artistic director of “O” says of the show’s star attraction. (The show’s title derives from the pronunciation of eau, French for water.)
“When you walk into the theater, with its huge pool of water, your natural instinct is to feel calm,” she adds. “And also to feel curious.”
The city’s promise to reward speculative curiosity has long beckoned from across the desert. Motorists who’ve made the near-mythic drive from Los Angeles, skirting the Mojave to reach Vegas, know well the way the city appears in the haze like a rainbow. And water is more central to that myth than the parched vistas of the approach let on. (Speaking of drives, Michelin doesn’t supply only the tires that carry many a dreamer through the desert; the Bellagio restaurant Lago, offering some of the most striking fountain views, is the brainchild of Michelin-starred chef Julian Serrano.)
First, there were the artesian springs that fed the wild grasses referred to by settlers, in their native Spanish, as “the meadows.” Later, when the Great Depression threatened to bleed the valley’s fortunes dry, the wild Colorado River rushed in, the money spent by builders of the Hoover Dam keeping Vegas afloat to see the flowering of the Strip.
That’s why easing into a Watsu massage treatment at the Bellagio Spa—expertly administered in a pool calibrated to body temperature—or wandering the resort’s lush Conservatory and Botanical Garden, at any time verdant with up to 15,000 seasonal flowering plants, represents not an escape from the desert but rather full immersion into its particular earthen swirl. Jerry Bowlen is executive director of horticulture at the Bellagio. Each of the five seasonal shows in the Conservatory is conceived to be an “eye-popper,” he says, another course in the moveable feast that begins with the fountains outside and continues in the gardens, assuming physical and fragrant form.
For the fall Harvest Show Bowlen fills 13,000 square feet with golden chrysanthemums, an orchard gleaming with apples formed by red carnations, and—an Instagram favorite—a wizened, towering, talking oak. The Holiday Show brings poinsettias, topiary penguins, and a 42-foot silver fir trucked from Mount Shasta in the Cascades. These are followed by the guzmania and blue tango of the Chinese New Year display, the snapdragons and tulips of spring, and summer’s sunflowers, which stretch for the skylight like a toddler hoisted to his father’s shoulders for the purest fountain view. Eighteen thousand traipse beneath the pergolas each day; twenty-five thousand during the holiday season.
“When people tell their friends about going to Vegas,” Bowlen says, “the word is, you have to go to the Conservatory.” The space gurgles with a fountain of its own, and a fertilized irrigation system to ensure plant vibrancy. “We take great pride in that.”
In the Bellagio spa, Watsu treatments peel away every element of the Vegas experience except the water. Guided by a specialist like Marcie Peterson, guests float in a 94-degree pool, relaxing their necks to submerge their ears, resulting in the pulsing, cocoon-like self-possession unique to being underwater. Alert to guests’ slowed breathing and growing trust in the water’s support, Peterson moves them into deeper detachment and relaxation with stretches and other movements.
The transcendence deepened by the water is so complete that guests can be slow to come back to themselves, like the way time passes differently in the desert. “It’s emotional, for many people,” reports Peterson, one of the Bellagio’s lead massage therapists.
“Being underwater, everything is muffled—almost gone,” says Spa Operations Director Tammi Furce. “You’re forced to listen to what your body has to say. You’re not thinking about your grocery list, what you’re going to cook for dinner. It’s just stillness. I don’t know how to explain it.”
While Watsu is the waterborne renewal metaphor experienced individually, “O” by Cirque du Soleil is water-as-life writ large, in an ornate 1,800-seat theater that has been experienced by millions. Like Watsu, it operates at a precise pitch and temperature: 60 feet for the graceful high dives performers make into the pool, occasionally splashing the first two rows, and just above 88 degrees, for the comfort of the 77-member cast.
Reinforced by the tranquility of Watsu, the maxim that water seeks its own level holds true in Vegas, but “O” makes a point of defying the laws of physics. The show’s narrative uses its liquid stage to maximum effect, finding in submergence a poetic visual symbol for death, but also, in the way synchronized swimmers climb back into the world with a perfectly executed balletic pointe, the uplift of rebirth.
“Through water, we’re really able to tap into deeper emotions,” says Croft, who appreciates the utility-player aspect of the element. “Water can be calm and peaceful, like life. And it can be turbulent and merciless and unpredictable, like life.”
As it puts performers through their paces, the waters of “O” flow into a rhythm of peaks and valleys, runs of luck and loss recognizable to anyone familiar with this city’s tidal patterns.
“It’s a journey, a cycle, that everyone can relate to,” Croft says. Through light and sound and water, she and the company affirm nightly that in Vegas as in life “things are good, then they turn bad, but you know they’re going to turn good again.”
