Stars And Royalty Watch ABBA’s Return In Digital Stage Show
27.05.2022 - 20:29
/ etcanada.com
“ABBA Voyage” is certainly a trip.
Four decades after the Swedish pop supergroup last performed live, audiences can once again see ABBA onstage in an innovative digital concert where past and future collide.
The show opens to the public in London on Friday, the day after a red-carpet premiere attended by superfans, celebrities and Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia. The guests of honour were pop royalty — the four members of ABBA, appearing in public together for the first time in years.
They were in the audience, though. Onstage at the specially built 3,000-seat ABBA Arena next to east London’s Olympic Park were a 10-piece live backing band and a digital ABBA, created using motion capture and other technology by Industrial Light and Magic, the special effects firm founded by “Star Wars” director George Lucas.
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The voices and movements are the real Agnetha Faltskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad — choreographed by Britain’s Wayne McGregor — but the performers onstage are digital avatars, inevitably dubbed “ABBA-tars.” In unsettlingly realistic detail, they depict the band members as they looked in their 1970s heyday — beards on the men, flowing locks on the women, velour pantsuits all around.
The result is both high tech and high camp, a glittery supernova of stupefying technology, 1970s nostalgia and pop music genius.
For many in the audience, it was almost like being taken back in time to watch ABBA perform classics including “Mamma Mia”, “Knowing Me, Knowing You”, “SOS” and “Dancing Queen”. The peppy 90-minute set also includes tracks from Voyage, the reunion album the band released last year.
It’s