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For Cirque du Soleil’s del Campos, the stage is a family affair

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Alberto del Campo and his son Zack
Photo: Wade Vandervort

You may be having a hard time finding the right Father’s Day gift for your dad, but it would be even harder if you were Zack del Campo. He just turned 10 years old, but that’s not the real problem. His dad is one of the coolest dads in Las Vegas, an acrobat in Cirque du Soleil’s The Beatles Love at the Mirage, who’s joined onstage most nights by Zack, one of the show’s younger cast members.

What could possibly make a better gift than this Vegas onstage togetherness? “Hugs?” Zack suggests.

Cirque du Soleil families, del Campos

“I love it,” agrees his dad, Alberto del Campo, who first came to town for a role in Le Rêve at Wynn Las Vegas. He left that show after a dozen years to join , and that’s when his older son Alex, now 12, had joined the cast of Love. Zack joined his brother soon afterwards. Mom/wife Genevieve Garneau is also an acrobatic performer who started in O and can currently be seen in Le Rêve.

Love is one of the rare Strip productions that has kids in the cast; Zack is part of a foursome that plays the younger Beatles during a few sequences. He enjoys performing and especially spending time around his dad, but soccer is his main priority right now. It’s Alex who is considering following in his parents’ performing footsteps—he aged out of the Love cast but performed in this year’s One Night for One Drop show at Bellagio—but Zack is definitely into the music of Love.

“When I was like 5 years old I never knew about The Beatles,” he says. “When I first heard about The Beatles, I was like, the bug beetles? What type of beetle?” His first Beatles tune was “Yellow Submarine,” but now he likes “Yesterday” and “Help.” “All of them are pretty good, actually.”

The del Campos are one of many Cirque du Soleil families living and working in Las Vegas. Artists and crew members come from all over the world to create and perform in these iconic shows, so relationships, marriages and children are a natural by-product of the tight-knit community.

“You come here and you don’t know anyone, so your family is the other performers,” Alberto says. “The more shows you do, the more family you have.”

Alberto left his native Spain at the age of 19 to travel across Europe as a circus performer. In Love, he’s onstage more and taking fewer risks than he did in the action-packed . “It’s good for me because I’m 40. It’s good for my body now.

“It’s a good job to have. When Zack and Alex have been in the show, I’m always asking them, ‘Do you like to come to work?’ And they do, and I tell them this is what you should feel like when you choose your work later on.”

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Brock Radke

Brock Radke is an award-winning writer and columnist who currently occupies the role of managing editor at Las Vegas Weekly ...

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