HALE CENTRE THEATRE LIFTS CURTAIN ON NEW STAGE.

• Author: Taylor, Adva
• Position: Around Utah

Sandy -- After years of work and an $80 million price tag, the HALE CENTRE THEATRE at the Mountain America Performing Arts Centre has drawn up its curtain. In November, the theatre began its inaugural performance in the 900-seat center stage of Tim Rice and Elton John's Aida, to a crowd of thrilled patrons including Sandy Mayor Tom Dolan, Gov. Gary Herbert, as well as many of the theatre's biggest benefactors.

The night represented the culmination of the dreams of many, said Sally Dietlein, vice president and executive producer of the theatre.

"It's the dreams of all of the people we have the privilege of working with, the patrons and the actors who come in. It's their dream," said Dietlein. "It's been a dream come true for all of them. I'm happy, because we now get to break ground and discover new things that were just never before possible in theatrical presentations."

Some of those new explorations will be due to the theatre's new stage, built by renowned live events technology company TAIT Towers, which has created installations both permanent and traveling for stars such as The Rolling Stones and Beyonce, the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremonies, and in such places as the Caesar's Palace Las Vegas.

The stage the company created for the Hale Centre Theatre is currently one of the most technologically advanced stages in the world, with 120 motors and weighing 80 tons. The entire stage floor moves, and can lower and raise objects and actors into the basement, and has extra-strength capacity so it can be filled with eight feet of water. In order to accommodate all of the technology and machinery that makes its stage work, the Hale Centre Theatre building goes almost as far deep into the ground as it stands above it.

"It's funny. Of course, you pick the colors and the woods and the surfaces. You try to scale it, but you never imagine it's going to be this," said Dietlein. "But then you add to it, beyond the beauty, all of...