Immersive Atlantis Seaside Cabaret Splashes Into Cervantes' on Sunday

Decades ago, the building at 2635 Welton Street was the legendary Casino Cabaret, a stop for great big-band and jazz acts like Duke Ellington and Count Basie when they'd come through Denver. The venue took a major turn in the ’90s, choosing raves over jazz music. Since it became Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom twenty years ago, the stage has welcomed a variety of genres, but the venue will return to its roots on Sunday, February 26, when it hosts Atlantis Seaside Cabaret by Deja View Productions.

"It's about bringing back the history of Cervantes' and the cabaret," says Deja View founder Luna Cash, who debuted her Alice in Wonderland-inspired cabaret, A Dream Within a Dream, at Cervantes' last July.

Cash started Deja View Productions in order to put more of her own creative vision at the forefront while collaborating with other artists, as she had done in the past with performance arts groups like Tetra Incendia; she writes the storylines and acts as the creative director and producer for her cabarets. "The whole idea was to kind of give myself permission to make art again," Cash says.

She calls Atlantis Seaside Cabaret "a sexy seaside saga" that will include a stellar lineup of aerial and pole artists, dancers, burlesque acts, acrobatics and more circus arts, all set to live music with musicians from such Denver acts as Bathing Lagoon, XVRS, SHGA and Spinphony.
"It's a little bit of a twist on the classic Little Mermaid tale," Cash says. "My mom, for some reason, had this VHS of a very dark Little Mermaid, and she dies at the end; it was tragic. I could not stop thinking about it when I was working on this mermaid theme, so it's kind of based on the original Little Mermaid story."

Cash has her own role in the immersive production: She's playing the Sea Witch, who curses a mermaid to either find true love or live forever with the Sea Witch and her sirens. The mermaid "finds a sexy sailor and they live their life together but have dark forces coming in to try to stop it," Cash notes.

Audiences will find influences ranging from pop culture's Little Mermaid to fine art. One number is inspired by Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus," Cash says, while another has mermaids swinging through the air on aerial silks. And fitting for this production, there is a fifteen-foot catwalk with a splash zone at the end — though Cash promises, "We aren't going to send anyone home soaking wet."

Given the range of performance art, the audience is bound to be entertained. "The integrative arts — the storytelling, the dance, the theater, oration, all of that — I think really grab our attention," Cash says. "We want to keep it fast-moving and give the audience different things, and not something that's gonna sit in one place for too long. My goal was to bring together the things that are familiar but new at the same time."

This won't be the last time Deja View Productions boasts a cabaret; Cash wants to produce a consistent output this year, keeping cabaret alive and well in the Mile High City. "We're looking at bringing back A Dream Within a Dream, and we'll definitely be doing the Seaside Cabaret again here in the summer," she says. "And we're hoping to start putting together more original music with our new productions. A couple of stories coming include a modern take on Dante's Inferno. We have a show about daydreaming, as well, about finding magic in everyday life, and it's really fun."

Meanwhile, there should be plenty of fun at Sunday's Seaside Cabaret.

"This is a really unique event," Cash concludes. "We have a lot of really, really talented performers in Denver, and you're getting the best of the best; ours are the cream of the crop. And that's all mixed into one in-your-face sexy story that you just don't want to miss!" Atlantis: A Seaside Cabaret, 6 p.m. Sunday, February 26, Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom, 2637 Welton Street; tickets run from $40 to $70.