ABBA at the premiere of her VOYAGE show in London
Photo: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images, Dave J Hogan. All rights reserved.
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“Voyage” travels the world: On Thursday, March 02, 2023, Lucian Grainge – the chairman of Universal Music Group – announced at the company’s annual press conference that ABBA’s spectacular virtual live show will go on a world tour.
He said: “Plans are now being developed to bring ‘ABBA Voyage’ around the world.” Exactly how that will be implemented is not yet known – most likely it means the show will be staged in converted arenas in major cities is brought to the stage all over the world.
A special arena was built in London for “Voyage”, and since May 2022 a show of ABBA’s greatest hits has been taking place there every evening. Using George Lucas’ “Light & Magic motion capture technique”, avatars of the band members were developed that look exactly as they did in 1979. This works as moderately as “Rolling Stone” editor Sassan Niasseri in a review of the show: “Frida sings “Fernando”, she looks like Frida, but she is not Frida. Your eyes lack the shine. The “Uncanny Valley” problem is not exclusive to Abba, all of Hollywood has been grappling with it for almost 20 years, since Robert Zemeckis’ “Polar Express” from 2004.” Nevertheless, he found: “The George Lucas company Industrial commissioned by Abba Light & Magic (ILM) has at least that can be said after the premiere of the “Voyage” show in London (May 26) say, made a step forward.”
Since the end of February the rumor has been spreading that after ABBA now also David Bowie should get its own virtual reality live show. So said a source the British newspaper “Sunday Mirror”: “The idea of being able to recreate David’s charisma and electric stage presence for an audience is exhilarating and the possibilities of how to do that are currently being explored. It is a very exciting time.”
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