Cirque du Soleil in Lecce, Italy - KA Show Videos

Cirque du Soleil gave a special acrobatic performance on December 5, 2008 during the Notte Bianca street festival in Lecce, Italy that consisted of multiple parts, involving dozens of artists.

Acts like Russian Bars, Spanish Web and other Aerial performances, Cyr Wheel, Wheel of Death and general dancers, singers and musicians as well as light projection and other special effects.

My 28 minutes video of these performances is based on the footage of several home made videos that I found on the web. The visual quality differs from good to poor, but I hope that I was able to capture the essence of the show. I replaced the audio almost entirely, but tried to be true to the actual music as good as possible. The original videos are still out there, if you want to see the true live recordings of the event.

Here is the 28 minutes video that I created about this special performance by Cirque du Soleil in Lecce, Italy.

 Backup Link to Video on Google Video

Cirque du Soleil - KA - Video Recording of the Entire Show

I was talking about the issue that non of the Vegas Cirque du Soleil shows are available on DVD and that video footage will leak out over time to cover the whole show, like in the case of Cirque du Soleil's epic show KA, which is performed live at the MGM Grand hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The raw videos of the show are available via torrent downloads, such as here (German Intro Narration, XVID, .AVI) and also here (French Intro Narration, MPEG-2 Format).

So I decided to lean myself a bit out of the window and sliced the video up into 9 pieces and put it up on my YouTube channel for Cirque du Soleil related videos of mine. Here is the link to part one. To find the remaining 8 videos, check out the play list that I created for this video series.

The Intro narration is in German (that's the version that I used for YouTube) and translates to:

On the way to a pageant to their honor, the imperial twins put their skills in the traditional art of sword fighting to the test. They have no idea on that day, about the real threats that lay ahead of them. About the great thunder that will soon put an end to the innocent lives that they were used to. About destruction and devastation that will drive an entire nation into exile and about the chaos of war that will soon separate the brave brother from his beloved sister. This is the story about the journey to self discovery of a young man and a young woman through their experiences with love, conflicts and the duality of KA, the fire that has the power to combine or to separate and the power to destroy or to enlighten.

Fast Facts about KA

• Length of the show: about 90 minutes
• Venue: The "KA Theatre" at the MGM Grand hotel & casino in Las Vegas, NV
• Premiere(s): 26.November 2004/03.February 2005, in Las Vegas, Nevada
• Official Show Homepage on the Web: http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/KA
• People: 80 artists from around the world perform the show twice per day, 5 days per week and about 50 weeks per year
• Show times: Tuesdays to Saturdays, one at 7:00 pm and a second show at 9:30 pm local time, No show performances on Mondays and Sundays
• Over 100 crew members are working for the show in 8 or more technical and artist support departments, including wardrobe, make-up and wig personal.
• The music is played live, by human-beings, every time, only about 2 minutes of pre-recorded audio is used throughout the whole performance
• The total number of cast and crew for the show is about 266 people
• The production cost for KA were higher than the combined cost of all Broadway productions that were released in the same year as KA
• The custom build venue for the show inside the MGM has 1,951 seats
• Every seat is equipped with its own loud speakers for optimal sound experience
• The main stage of KA is called a "Gantry" made of 2 decks, one that can slide forward and backward and the other one which can be rotated and moved 360 degrees.
• The main deck is 25x50 feet (8x16 meters) in diameter, weighs 300,000 lbs, which is more than a fully booked, loaded and gassed-up average-size jet airliner
• If fully erected to its maximum height, artists perform their act 100 ft above the ground
• Ticket prices for the show range from about $75 to $165 per seat and are available at the MGM box offices at MGM properties, via toll free phone # at (800) 929-1111 and on the web at http://mgm-cds.admission.com/ or http://www.cirquedusolei.com/CirqueDuSoleil/en/showtickets/ka/tickets/

The Creators of the Show KA

• Show Director: Robert LePage
• Director of Creation: Guy Caron
• Music Composer: Rene Dupere
• Set Designer: Mark Fisher
• Costumes Designer: Marie-Chantale Vaillancourt
• Props Designer: Patricia Ruel
• Lighting Director: Luc Lafortune
• Sound Designer: Jonathan Deans
• Trainer for Aerial Performances: Andre Simard
• Choreographer: Jacques Heim
• Puppets Creation & Choreography: Michael Curry

For more Cirque du Soleil visit http://www.roysac.com/cirque

Regardless of the video, you should go and see it live, if you get to Vegas, because no video can substitute the live theatre experience. However, I do hope that this incident will cause MGM and Cirque du Soleil to rethink their policy about DVD releases of Vegas Cirque du Soleil shows and release those shows on DVD for people to buy legally. Not everybody can make it to Vegas and/or afford the ticket price to see the shows live. And also people like me, who saw the shows already, several of them even more than once, would like to have the DVD and watch it to refresh some of the good memories from the live experience.

Note: Cirque du Soleil had some of the 9 KA videos taken down by YouTube, so the play list is not complete anymore. However, the 9 segments can still be downloaded in AVI format from my file share at Mediafire.com

Part 1: http://www.mediafire.com/?znt5qzlwtdz
Part 2: http://www.mediafire.com/?wynyauglmzu
Part 3: http://www.mediafire.com/?jmomynjfzdk
Part 4: http://www.mediafire.com/?nzynximlmzt
Part 5: http://www.mediafire.com/?ymqyygvzy0t
Part 6: http://www.mediafire.com/?zdmzyynwymy
Part 7: http://www.mediafire.com/?mzjnjybytex
Part 8: http://www.mediafire.com/?molzthhyozw
Part 9: http://www.mediafire.com/?ojmlzummzyq

Enjoy and Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC