Rio Rancho Observer
DINO-MITE! NATIONAL TOUR COMES TO RIO RANCHO
It’s been 65 million years since dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
But in three months, you’ll be able to see 17 of them here in Rio Rancho, as “Walking with Dinosaurs — The Arena Spectacular” visits Santa Ana Star Center March 17-21.
The extravagant production — six years and $20 million in the making — was heralded last Thursday morning at the Star Center.
Two first-grade classrooms from Colinas del Norte Elementary were invited, along with media members and local dignitaries, to watch a video about the production and see a baby Tyrannosaurus Rex enter the arena, roar and swing its tail around.
The March show here will be the tour’s inaugural visit to New Mexico. There will be 25 semi trucks hauling the cast of dinosaurs here, along with crew and equipment.
Thanks to the popularity of the “Jurassic Park” trilogy, renewed interest in dinosaurs has captivated the world and, here in the U.S., more than 2.4 million Americans have seen the production since it opened in July 2007.
The show originated in Australia, where after years of planning, it came to life at Sydney’s Acer Arena in January 2007. An immediate sensation, the North American tour was put on the fast track and began three months after completing its sold-out engagements in Australia.
The dinosaurs are life-size, the biggest 72 feet in length, and each weighs 1.6 tons or more. There’s not a bad seat at the Star Center for the show, given its immense size.
“The Arena Spectacular” version has sold out performances and broken records in arenas all over the U.S., generating more than $135 million in ticket sales to date.
Artistic director William May developed the creative vision of the show based on an original idea by entrepreneur Bruce Mactaggart to create an arena version of the “Walking with Dinosaurs” television series on the BBC.
It took artists and technicians a year to build the show. The dinosaurs were originally “hatched” in a Melbourne workshop big enough to park a 747.
Ten species are represented from the entire 200-million year reign of the dinosaurs. The show includes the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the terror of the ancient terrain, as well as the Plateosaurus and Liliensternus from the Triassic period, the Stegosaurus and Allosaurus from the Jurassic period and Torosaurus and Utahraptor from the awesome Cretaceous. The largest of them, the Brachiosaurus, is 36 feet tall, and 56 feet from nose to tail.
The show depicts the dinosaurs’ evolution, complete with the climatic and tectonic changes that took place, which led to the demise of many species.
In the show, the history of the world is played out with the splitting of the earth’s continents, and the transition from the arid desert of the Triassic period is given over to the lush green prairies and forces of the later Jurassic. Oceans form, volcanoes erupt, a forest catches fire — all leading to the impact of the massive comet, which struck the earth, and forced the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Director Scott Faris said, “We take the audience on a journey back in time and show them how the dinosaurs might have actually looked in their prime — huge, sometimes frightening, sometimes comical monsters — that fought for survival every day of their lives. Our dinosaurs move exactly like they are real — with all the roars, snorts and excitement that go with it. The realism is mind-blowing.”
Creature creator Sonny Tilders said, “Many of the technologies we are using on ‘Walking with Dinosarus — the Arena Spectacular’ are borrowed from film. The computer software and hardware we have developed is based on the systems used to control animatronic creatures in feature films.
“To make it appear that these creatures are flesh and blood weighing six, eight or even 20 tons, we use a system called ‘muscle bags,’ made from stretch mesh fabric and filled with polystyrene balls, stretched across moving points on the body. These contract and stretch in the same manner that muscle, fat, and skin does on real creatures.
“The puppeteers use ‘voodoo rigs’ to make many of the dinosaurs move. They are miniature versions of the dinosaurs with the same joints and range of movement as their life-sized counterparts. The puppeteer manipulates the voodoo rig and these actions are interpreted by computer and transmitted by radio waves to make the hydraulic cylinders in the actual dinosaur replicate the action, with a driver hidden below the animal, helping to maneuver it around the arena.”