Mukhtar Mukhtar
The person responsible for how ALMA moves. Two decades of live performance, a Cirque du Soleil background, and a Super Bowl halftime show — applied to a hillside in the jungle.
Director & choreographer
Who he is
Mukhtar Mukhtar is a director and choreographer who has spent more than two decades in large-scale live performance. His background runs through Cirque du Soleil, and in February 2024 he choreographed Usher’s Super Bowl LVIII halftime show at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas — about as large as a live audience gets.
His work spans theatre, dance and film across several continents, and the thread through it is fusing traditional cultural material with contemporary staging rather than treating the two as separate registers.
What he changes about your evening
Most dinner shows are staged like a proscenium: performers in front, audience in rows, one direction to look. ALMA is not built that way, and that is a directorial decision rather than a consequence of the venue.
The theatre at Las Caletas is cut into a hillside with jungle immediately behind the stage. Mukhtar’s staging uses depth and height — performers appear at different elevations, action moves across the space rather than sitting in one frame, and the aerial work exists because there is somewhere above the stage to use. If the show feels like it is happening around you, that is the choreography exploiting the terrain instead of fighting it.
What to watch for
- Where the performers enter from. Not all of it happens on the stage floor, and not all of it happens in front of you.
- Group work versus solo work. The transitions between mass movement and single figures is where the Cirque discipline is most visible.
- How the aerial sequences use the height. The vertical space is part of the set, not a bolt-on.
No ticket tier sees a different show. Your tier changes which section you watch it from — see the ALMA guide for what the production is, spoiler-light.