Las Vegas pair test skills in ‘Ninja Warrior’ finals
Acrobat, personal trainer push their bodies, minds to master obstacle course
Las Vegan Dustin Rocho competes on the salmon ladder during Season 7 of “American Ninja Warrior.”
It is 1 a.m. when Dustin Rocho starts pacing back and forth at the beginning of the obstacle course for Season7 of “American Ninja Warrior.”
Despite the time and having to wait hours before he could tackle the course, Rocho is ready.
And so is the crowd as it greets him with cheers and chants, showing support for the latest contestant.
“American Ninja Warrior” finals have begun testing the best of the best.
Though theshow began airing Monday, taping for theepisodes started the night of June 24, as hundreds of contestants from across the country flew to Las Vegas to test their "Ninja" skills.
They climbed net ladders, swung from ropes and scaled walls, along with various other seemingly impossible obstacles, trying to avoid plummeting into the cold waters below.
Some made it past two obstacles, while some made it through four. Every now and again, someone made it all the way through the first round of the finals.
As the “American Ninja Warrior” finals air on KSNV-TV, Channel 3,there aretwo Las Vegas hopefulscompeting— Rocho and Almas Meirmanov.
Meirmanov is an acrobat and performer at “Absinthe.” He is also a personal trainer and owner of the gym Intermix Fitness in Henderson.
As if his life weren't active enough, Meirmanov set his sights on becoming a ninja warrior.
“I’ve always been following it and it’s something I wanted to do for three years,” he says.
Though he is in peak physical condition, he says it has still been a chance to train harder and get better at other obstacles.
The warp wall and salmon ladders are something he has been working on.
“Though I’m in good shape, those are just something completely different,” he says.
He already knows he will return again and again.
“You just gotta have fun with it,” he says.
Rocho has been competing in “American Ninja Warrior” since Season 2.
After a quick tour of the layout before filming starts, he is already pumped to conquer another course.
Since high school, Rocho, 36, hasremained active with sports such as basketball, football and baseball.
He has continued to be active training— and training others— at the gym Camp Rhino.
Though the night brings many new faces, it also features "Ninja" sensations such as Kacy Catanzaro and Brent Steffensen.
“You still get butterflies in your stomach,” Steffensen says.
Catanzaro became an Internet sensation by being the first woman to complete the qualifying course, in which she scaled the 14-foot warp wall last season.
“I really never imagined so many people would watch it,” she says. “It feels good that people find it so inspiring.”
With the presentations of individual scenes, audiences “can really enjoy the singing and the acting,” he says. “A lot of people who don’t go to opera, the first time they hear it, they’re amazed at how great it is.”
And while Wednesday’s program “may just be a sampler,” Ivy says, “they’re familiar melodies,” she adds, noting that the “Nabucco” selection, “Va, pensiero,” is "used in ads all the time.”
The Verdi salute represents Ivy’s first Southern Nevada performance since her days as an Opera Las Vegas Young Artist.
The UNLV graduate grew up in Las Vegas, attending Knudson Middle School and the Las Vegas Academy — and she still has the 702 area code on her cellphone to prove her Southern Nevada credentials.
Some of her California colleagues are surprised to hear that she’s a Vegas girl, she acknowledges.
Some of them even ask her, “‘You live in a casino, right?’ ” Ivy notes. “They just don’t expect to see opera singers from Las Vegas.”
Ivy first decided she was going to sing opera at age 4, when she heard Mozart’s “Queen of the Night” aria from “The Magic Flute” and told her mother, a classical musician, “‘Mom, I’m going to sing that,’ ” she recalls.
During Wednesday’s program, Ivy will perform excerpts from “I Vespri Sicilliani” and “Rigoletto,” but her “La Traviata” selections are her favorites, in part because the role of Violetta is “fun to sing, really acrobatic” vocally. “It shows off the voice."
In addition, "it’s about living life in a very free manner," Ivy adds. "It’s nice to sing something that’s not about death.” (Even though — spoiler alert! — Violetta, a famed courtesan, ultimately succumbs to consumption, but not before finding love with a dashing young nobleman.)
Singing Verdi “is more challenging for younger singers,” according to Jim Sohre, who returns to produce and host “Viva Verdi!” following last year’s Puccini program.
“Immediately before each selection, I give a little background,” explaining the opera’s characters and contexts, Sohre explains. “The music is so beautiful it carries (audiences) along.”
Even so, much of Verdi’s music requires “a much more dramatic use of the voice,” says Sohre, who retired to Las Vegas after 39 years in Army entertainment, 33 of them in Europe.
Despite the challenge to younger singers, at a recent rehearsal with Sohre, Young Artists Gonzalez and McKee have no trouble hitting their notes — and capturing the emotions — required.
Gonzalez reacts to McKee’s pensive rendition of “Ernani, involami” with an enthusiastic “Yeah, girl!” (Of course, McKee’s character is pensive — she loves the title bandit but is about to be married off to another, much older man.)
Then, clustered around Sohre’s grand piano, Gonzalez and McKee share a dramatic "Aida" duet, with McKee Marcie Lay, left, and Eugene “Trey” Richards of Opera Las Vegas rehearse a scene from “Macbeth” for the “Viva Verdi!” program, to be presented Wednesday at The Smith Center’s Cabaret Jazz. as the noble title character (an enslaved Ethiopian princess), and Gonzalez as jealous Amneris, the Pharaoh's daughter, her rival for the affections of Egyptian commander Radames.
All that emotion gains even more impact in The Smith Center's intimate Cabaret Jazz, according to Ivy, who’s performed there during a few “Jim Caruso’s Cast Party” shows.
“You can see from every corner,” she notes. “It gives you a more intimate connection with the singers.” —For more stories from Carol Cling go to bestoflasvegas. com. Contact her at ccling@ reviewjournal.com and follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.