'Aluminum' a shining example of new-look entertainment

Not that long ago, summer for Atlantic City casino entertainment folks meant a lot of dark days.

After all, crowds were coming anyway, the rationale went, so why waste effort booking entertainment that would keep them off the gaming floors? Big name stars would occasionally perform and the inevitable Beach Boys - or other oldies groups - concerts would come to town, mostly around July 4th. For the most part, though, it was beach-bar balladeers and cover bands.

Now, though, competition in the gambling industry is fostering change. With pit stops along the interstate and riverboats galore offering gambling, Atlantic City has been forced to reinvent itself in many ways, not the least of which means that there is now a wide variety of entertainment at the casinos, even in the summer.

This month, for instance, has brought John Legend, the Eagles, Aretha Franklin and Jay Leno to the Shore.

That new entertainment wave also includes the offbeat. The Trump Taj Mahal, for example, had the "Bodies" exhibit, a somewhat icky display of human anatomy, a cross between a biology class and a sculpture garden.

Currently running at its sister property, the Trump Plaza, is another move into the offbeat, "The Aluminum Show."

Devised by an Israeli dancer and choreographer, Ilan Azriel, "The Aluminum Show" has dancers gliding, galumphing and galloping around the stage either wearing, manipulating or somehow using aluminum.

Azriel comes from the rural desert south of Israel, a barren place of basic farming and industry. Though he became a modern dancer in Tel Aviv in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he apparently never forgot his industrial roots.

In the middle 1990s, Azriel started doing "Doll Beat," one-man dance shows in which he also used puppets. Constructing the puppets, he found that aluminum in its various forms - from hard scrap pieces to kitchen-type aluminum foil - was both malleable for building and glittery for showiness.

He began constructing costumes with aluminum, engulfing arms and legs in bending aluminum piping and attaching large scrap pieces like armor. By 2003, he was ready with a choreographed show, a whole paean to aluminum.

The current "Aluminum Show" lasts about 75 minutes, without an intermission. It is akin, perhaps, to Cirque de Soleil, with its contorting bodies - there are six dancers - and bright costuming and staging.

It is somewhat comic in its presentation, a miming performance with no narration and a modern, mostly techno soundtrack.

While it is an odd thought to have a show based on aluminum - Azriel claims it is all recyclable, down to the aluminum confetti the dancers throw around - it is perhaps no more odd than ones with bawdy Irish jokes or nearly naked men flirting with grandmas or pop stars on their geriatric tours.

After all, it wasn't all that far back that, just down the Boardwalk from the Trump Plaza, the big summer draw was a sequined lady on a horse "diving" into the Atlantic. *

Trump Plaza, Boardwalk and Mississippi Avenue, 8 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, also 3 p.m. Saturday, through Aug. 31, $35, 609-441-6000, or ticketmaster.com.