Cirque du Soleil – Criss Angel, new Tokyo and Macao Shows Updates

Hey folks, here is a quick update for what is going on with Cirque du Soleil.

The new Cirque du Soleil and Criss Angel's "Believe" show at Luxor was supposed to open September 1, 2008 for 15 previews through September 11, 2008 followed by a grand opening gala on September 12, 2008, instead, the gala opening has been pushed back to October and the show gets a "soft" opening on September 12, 2008.

The gala opening premiere date was first rescheduled for October 9, 2008 but then moved back a day to Friday, October 10, 2008, because October 9, 2008 is a major Jewish holiday.

It is now questionable, if I can make it to the show as I planned for September. I will probably be again in Vegas in November though, for a second chance. It’s a small bummer though.

Meanwhile, the names for the Cirque du Soleil shows for Tokyo and Macao were revealed and there have been some press conferences where I got some video footage from to get a small glimpse at the new shows.

The Tokyo show is called "Zed".

Here is a video that includes the web intro, some press conference footage and a TV spot in Japanese for the new Cirque du Soleil show that will premiere on October 1, 2008 at the Cirque du Soleil Theatre at Disney Resort Tokyo (Disneyland).



Backup Link to Video on YouTube.

Also see the official "ZED" website for ticket purchases and more.

"Zed" Show Creators

François Girard -Writer and Director
Line Tremblay - Director of Creation
Francois Seguin - Set Designer
Renee April - Costume Designer
Rene Dupere - Composer and Arranger
David Finn - Lighting Designer
Debra Brown - Choreographer
Jean-Jacques Pillet - Choreographer
Francois Bergeron - Sound Designer
Scott Osgood - Acrobatic Equipment and Rigging Designer
Florence Pot - Acrobatic Performance Designer
Eleni Uranis - Make-up Designer

The upcoming show by Cirque du Soleil at the Sands Venetian Macao resort and casino at the Cotai Strip in Macao, China (Asia) is called "Zaia" (Work name Cosmos).

Here is a 9:07 min preview for the show. This video took me some considerable work to do. The show is expected to open on 26. August next month.



Backup Link to Video on YouTube.

You can tell that the quality of the individual video sources differs significantly, but you will get an idea of what the show will be like and that is the whole purpose of the video.

I could (if I would have it) show a multi-angle 7.1 Dolby digital HDTV-DVD version of the entire show and it would also just be a preview of the show, because Cirque shows have to be experienced live. There is no canned substitute for this yet.

"Zaia" Show Creators

Guy Laliberté - Guide
Gilles Ste-Croix - SVP, Creative Content
Gilles Maheu - Writer and Director
Neilson Vignola - Director of Creation
Guillaume Lord - Set Designer
Dominique Lemieux - Costume Designer
Violaine Corradi - Composer & Musical Director
Martino Müller - Choreographer
Jeff Hall - Acrobatic Choreogpraher
Rob Bollinger - Acrobatic Performance Designer
Guy Lemire - Acrobatic Equipment & Rigging
Axel Morgenthaler - Lighting Designer
Jimmy Lakatos - Projection Designer
Raymond Saint-Jean - Projection Designer
Steve Dubuc - Sound Designer
Nathalie Gagné - Make-up Designer
Leonid Leykin - Clown Acts Designer

I also got some video footage from new Cirque du Soleil special performances. I updated my Cirque du Soleil primer with those, so go and check it out. You can also access my latest Cirque du Soleil videos on YouTube.

That is it for now. Signing off

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Videos Working Again – YouTube Pain Update

Boy, what days. I was working on getting two years worth of videos up again and the links and embedded players on my site fixed.

Well, over 150 videos from over 2 years, not a task that you could consider to be a light and easy one.

To learn about the reasons why I had to do all the changes, check out my original post first and then my post at SearchEngineJournal.com, where I complained about YouTube and how they handle things.


I never heard a word back from them... nada, nothing, nichts, nitschevo. I am still very mad at them, especially, because they never even bothered to let me know why they did it. They simply blocked the account, all videos became inaccessible. No access to video comments, messages, subscribers, nothing.

I found out that I can access my play lists, if I know the URL. I can only access videos in those lists that are not from my account though. I also found something in the YouTube "account" section of my other YouTube accounts that I have not seen before. It is a page called "Account Warnings" where it says for my other accounts: "Your account is in good standing."

I wonder if there was anything different in my primary YouTube account. I cannot recall that I ever received a notice about any messages or notes that would be considered "Account Warnings". I am pretty sure that they suspended my account without prior warning so I question the usefulness of this feature.

It is a farce and I cannot do anything against this from a legal point of view. YouTube's Terms and Conditions state

"YouTube may remove such User Submissions and/or terminate a User's access for uploading such material in violation of these Terms of Service at any time, without prior notice and at its sole discretion."

Short: We do what we want with your account and delete anything were we do not like the smell of it. The smell does not have to be "copyright infringement".

This statement in their terms and conditions (which you have to agree on, when you create a YouTube account) should be reason enough for any professional to consider, if they really want to use such a service for their business purposes. I certainly would not. I learned my lesson to diversify, duplicate and consider any account and content published their "throw away" and "replicable", like a Hotmail.com email account.

Having local backups of any content is of key relevance to this, Also the saving of URLs and IDs of the videos itself for example. Perform a backup of subscriber names and comments (if they are important) on a regular basis.

Regarding subscribers, I had email notification enabled for everything at my YouTube account and kept all email notifications of new subscribers. I have already created a list and now need to contact them to let them know about my alternative accounts.

I also found the following statement, which I also mentioned in my blog post at SearchEngineJournal.com. It states:

"Users with suspended or terminated accounts are prohibited from creating new accounts or accessing YouTube’s community features."

Well, I had two other accounts already before this incident. I created one new one and plan to open another one to avoid putting all eggs into one basket and also keep the subject of the individual channels/accounts clean and separate. I don't know what I did wrong to justify the suspension of my account and do not feel as if I did anything wrong. As I mentioned, I already had two of the accounts already, before my main account was suspended. One, the sacreleases account even had (and has) more videos than my primary account.

I decided to take my chances and ignore this statement. It is as general and card Blanche as their other statement in their Terms of Use.

So now I have my old account "sacreleases" for everything related to BBS, ANSI/ASCII art, Demo Scene etc. I use this account (which I also created prior the suspension) for everything related to society, politics and that sort of things. I created the new account CirqueDuSoleilGuru for all the Cirque du Soleil and Performing Arts related content. I spent hours to get 80+ videos up at the account as quickly as possible. It went pretty smooth after a long preparation time before hand. The channel got a lot of traffic as a result of this and I made it yesterday even to spot 32. In the YouTube Top 100 "GURU" channels by number of views. Not bad eh?


I also got 12 subscribers to the channel within less than 48 hours.

I want to open a forth account for everything related to marketing, SEO and that sort of stuff, but there is no rush and I have way too much to do at the moment to do it right.

Some other things that I noticed in regards to YouTube that also raised some questions in my head are things like: What happens to the groups that I created with my suspended account? They are still working and show my old account as the group creator and administrator, but I cannot use that account anymore to administer the group. Mhh?

I created the group Cirque Fans and Warez Scene. They are now without a "leader" and manager.

p.s. Depeche Mode did also not respond to my mail that I sent them via MySpace, as expected. I mentioned that already at my journal at deviantART.com and can only repeat what I stated there.

"Be careful who you praise and support, they might not worth it."

Last but not least. If you should notice any reference, link, embedded player etc. on my site that refers to a video that is not available anymore, please let me know about it. You can send me a quick note via the contact form here, quick and anonymously, if you want to (just use a throw away email address or a fake one, if feel like it). Don't do that of course, if you want me to respond to your message hehe.

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC