How 'Discoshow' honors the genre's roots while keeping Vegas dancing

By Matthew Wexler

How hot is the disco inferno at Discoshow, Spiegelworld’s newest Vegas creative outpost? Though the cast has been trimmed down and its drag queen host written out of the script (no worries, you can still see RuPaul’s Drag Race LIVE) since its opening a little more than a year ago, the high-energy production still turns up the heat.

Director Steven Hogget, known on Broadway for his fantastic movement and choreography in productions like Sweeney Todd and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, collaborated with choreographer Yasmine Lee to harness disco’s legacy and contextualize the production, which reportedly cost $40 million to mount. Part of that pocket change went to its adjacent speakeasy, 99 Prince, a grunge subterranean-feeling cocktail lounge plastered with vintage New York City paraphernalia.

The audience at "Discoshow." Photo by Pari Dukovic/Spiegelworld. — The audience at “Discoshow.” Photo by Pari Dukovic/Spiegelworld.

The audience then moves to Glitterloft for a rollerskating preshow before migrating into the main venue, which harkens to Saturday Night Fever’s famed discotheque, 2001 Odyssey, here with a noticeable technology upgrade featuring an LED floor and extensive video mapping to underscore disco’s trajectory into mainstream pop culture.

Discoshow also has a script. <gasp!> Or at least a narrator by way of Ake Blomqvist, a goofy homage to the real-life Finnish disco dance teacher who brought the moves to the Scandinavian masses. The immersive experience invites attendees to get their groove on with Blomqvist’s coaching as he teaches disco essentials. But it’s the loosely interwoven storylines that give the show a heartbeat beyond “the Hustle.”

It’s easy to forget that cultural movements like disco were born out of social unrest and the expansion of creative expression by Black, Latin, and LGBTQ+ communities. While Discoshow doesn’t lean too heavily on this history, there’s enough preservation to remind even Vegas revelers that the movement was more than just the funky chicken.