Open Letter to YouTube/Google from an Active “You-Tuber”

Introductory Note to this Blog Post: Here is the content of the open letter that I just wrote and sent to YouTube support. I hope that they forward it to the appropriate entity at their company to have a closer look and hopefully also act on it appropriately.

The general issue is Copyright Laws that they cannot change, but the way how they deal with the situations that are a consequence of IMO insufficient laws in an environment they were not designed for and weren’t even envisioned when those laws were put in place to begin with.

The Letter:

This letter was written in response to the YouTube Account Inquiry #572435220 regarding the termination of the YouTube account “CirqueDuSoleilGuru” on December 18, 2009.

For whatever reason did your email response from January 6, 2010 to my web inquiry about the suspension of my YouTube account “CirqueDuSoleilGuru” on December 18, 2010 show up in my Gmail inbox now, several months later. I was looking for it back in January and did not find any of it. This is weird, but a separate issue.

I am pretty sure that YouTube accounts and their content that were suspended 4+ months ago cannot be reactivated and recovered anyway, so there is no urgency to the situation anymore and my comments can be classified as detailed user feedback, suggestions and complaints from a long time and very active YouTube user who operates multiple personal and professional YouTube accounts for different reasons and purposes. My initial response and not so “nice” blog post about the termination of my account can be found at this URL. It uses stronger words, but might be worth thinking about nevertheless. Several of my former 2000 channel subscribers contacted me via other means to inquire about the unexpected termination of my account that I felt the need to publish a statement myself publicly.

Background Story

The YouTube account “CirqueDuSoleilGuru” was my personal non-commercial outlet to promote and appreciate the Canadian entertainment company “Cirque du Soleil”, inform other people about activities and events that involve the Circus, review related merchandise and comment on various issues that concern the company and are of my personal interest and may also interest other fans of the Circus like me.

In addition to the YouTube channel, I maintained content in written format related to the same subject on my personal web site. The main entry page to this content would be my “Cirque du Soleil Primer Article” at http://www.roysac.com/cirque and its several dozen subsequent pages.

I have no commercial relationship with Cirque du Soleil, although my activities online were noticed and appreciated by various employees of the company, including artists, but also some of their marketing professionals. They notified me about events and other things that might of my interest without any obligations for me to follow up on that and without offering any financial reward for my efforts. However, I met their Las Vegas marketing executive in Las Vegas in person once and was given a free ticket to one of their shows that I have already seen. This was more a sign of being grateful for my support and not an attempt to pay me off or bribe me.

My YouTube channel featured over 200 videos, which could be categorized as follows.

1. Teaser and Promotional Material to Cirque du Soleil resident and touring shows as well as related merchandise, such as show recordings on DVD and similar products.
2. Behind the scene, Making of, Meet the artist kind of mini documentaries that could also be considered “promotional” in nature, although the main target audience would probably be Cirque fans like me, who are also interested in the things that go beyond their elaborate shows.
3. News footage about special activities that involve Cirque du Soleil in general. This can be a multitude of things, from Guinness Book of World Records attempts to Involvements in their Charity work in organizations such as the One Drop Foundation.
4. Original content that I created myself entirely that include product reviews and also “news type” of content or personal opinions about non-product related things.
5. Indirectly related content about Circus arts at large and also content that fall under the categories 1-3 that involve the famous and now former director of Cirque du Soleil, “Franco Dragonè”, who owns today his own company and works independent from Cirque du Soleil, but in the same field.
6. This is probably the category that is the most problematic one and with only a few exceptions all videos that were removed my YouTube in the past belonged to this one. Appearances and special performances by Cirque du Soleil outside their own productions. This includes promotional appearances on national television or special mini performances to openings of special events (such as Oscars, Grammy’s, and Olympic Games etc.). I have a special page that concerns just such performances, which is part of my Primer article series, titled “Cirque du Soleil Special Events and Performances”

I also like to add, that many but not all of the material published on my YouTube channel was edited by me prior its publication to the YouTube web site and not just a simple reproduction of existing material from other sources. Several hundreds of hours of actual work went into the 200+ videos that I published to this Channel.

Although content in the categories 1-2 is also “copyright protected” by law, so is it much less likely that the copyright owner would make a complaint about its publication and distribution free of charge, since it was produced for this purpose in the first place. Exception might be the use in an environment where the copyright owner does not want to be associated with and feels it to be inappropriate, but this is obviously not the case in my example. The owner had knowledge of it and actually appreciated my distribution and publication.

Regarding the content that falls into category 6 I have to say that I was and are aware that the content that I used was not free, but I also did not and do not feel that I was really violating any laws or caused damage or loss the owner of the intellectual property that I used for it. Now I am not a copyright lawyer myself, but after doing some self-study online, during conferences in educational sessions and personal talks to copyright lawyers I learned that the fair-use clause that I think applies to this content is not that clear and not objective applicable as I would wish it would. I only take snippets, typically 1-5 minutes out of 1-3 or more hours of copyrighted material that is only about the Cirque and virtually never about the setting and surrounding where this appearance takes place, which is however mentioned in detail as much as I know as future reference and for historic archiving purposes. It is of educational and almost news like character, where the “news” aspect might be the one that could be debated the most.

Penalty 1 and 3 are perfect examples of this. I am not a regular viewer of TV talk shows like Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” on NBC or “Chelsea Lately”, which I never even had heard of before I learned about Cirques special appearance on it.

Penalty 1:
"Cirque du Soleil - Zumanity @ Jay Leno" formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YVO0FD0RpQ
Removed due to a copyright claim by NBC Universal on 07/09/2008

Penalty 2:
"Cirque du Soleil - KA 1/9" formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzisBtyhCt4
Removed due to a copyright claim by Cirque du Soleil on 06/25/2009

Note: I left this video out of this discussion, because there is a much bigger story to it, which would be too much to bring into this general debate.

Penalty 3:
"Alan Silva from Cirque du Soleil's Zumanity at Chelsea Lately" formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3BMgsPwjdg
Removed due to a copyright claim by Comcast Entertainment Group on 12/18/2009

Since the laws is vague in this respect and my interest in this non-commercial, I did not and won’t file any counter suit if the copyright owner files a complaint with YouTube and is impossible to communicate with as an individual without commercial interests. I tend to make some attempts to contact the company who filed the complaint to sort out things using common sense and reasoning and come to a solution that serves our mutual interests, but that is unfortunately only accomplished successfully in very few of the cases where it happens.

I don’t mind to serve additional advertisement that benefits the owner or even change and extend the content description to include additional related information of commercial nature, including links to a target web site operated by the owner or an e-commerce site where related products can be purchased by viewers of the video.

This communication issue is something where YouTube/Google could provide some help.

YouTube would and should only act as a neutral relay of information without getting directly involved or extend on its legal responsibilities and risks. I think it would even lower the risks of YouTube, because it would show that the company is actively involved in solving conflicts that are located in a legal gray area and benefit both conflicting parties, save everybody involved time, money, bad blood and headaches and maybe even aids the formation of new partnerships along the way as a bonus.

YouTube does some of it already, but it is only a one-way street at the moment.

It offers to owners of the intellectual property already today the option to include additional ads and/or revenue share for existing ads served on Google property along with the content instead of taking it down completely, if the owner decides to do so. Examples are text ads in the format of video annotations with a link to buy the CD of the audio that is currently being heard by the viewer or extra ad units on the video detail page that promote other and maybe even related content of the copyright owner.

The Issue Today

Publishers are currently not offered anything to serve their interests and support their rights. They are treated, sorry my strong words, like dirt and 2^nd class people, whose time and energy is discarded as worthless and negligible, at the mercy of Google and large media companies to be erased without any warning at any time.

In the case of a complaint a publisher gets only very little choices and options, basically reduced to only one, which is to take legal actions themselves and better get a lawyer involved right away before anything might be done to do anything for them. Since the majority of publishers on YouTube are individuals who publish without commercial interests, this is actually very unlikely to be done. What everybody gets are rightfully first confused and then upset or even angry individuals that potentially harm not just Google’s business in the future but potentially also the business of copyright owner. All of this only because of something that probably does not harm anybody involved and most likely benefit everybody involved and may only requires some fine-tuning to make every party completely happy.

Suggested Solution

What YouTube could provide for example is the ability for a publisher to respond to a complaint via a web form, where he is able to state that he believes that the use of the copyrighted content does qualify to be exempted by a fair-use clause, which one and why. This would be non-formal and non-legally binding, entirely separated from any formal legal action the publisher could take. The publisher should also be enabled to make offers to the property owner, like the ones that I mentioned already earlier. Some of which could even be automated entirely by YouTube, such as the activation of additional Ad units on the video page or a supplemental video description block that can be maintained by the copyright owner.

Since the publisher needs to explain why he thinks fair-use might apply in his case, bogus claims could be filtered out fairly easily in most of the cases. The owner will also be forced to have a second look at the case and maybe learns about a previously missed opportunity at the same time that could be of even more benefit for him in the future. The number of actual law suits should in my opinion decrease as a consequence as well and the owner of the copyright also gets to know of the chance that a legal suit might back-fire and creates unnecessary cost for him and might even harms his business.

Google on the other hand adds another level of refinement to its system to better be able to distinguish between publishers who are in essence legitimate, but acting unfortunately in somewhat legal gray area und blatant violators of existing copyright laws that probably deserve the harsh and strict punishment exercised by YouTube in both cases today.

Along the way, you could also implement something where somebody who submits a complaint via your web complaint form gets the ability to retract this complaint, if things got resolved without any legal actions taken by any party, including the publisher. I still have a “Strike” in a different YouTube account that I manage where things got resolved directly between me and the entity who filed the complaint, even though that entity assured me that they tried to get a hold of somebody at YouTube to retract the previously filed complained that it will be removed from my account as a consequence.

See my case as an example.

A channel where over 200 videos were published over a period of 1 ½ years, with over 3.2 million views of those videos with over 5000 ratings and over 3000 user comments. The channel itself also had over 2000 subscribers. All wiped out from the face of this world, because of 3 cases where YouTube has no idea if there was potentially a law violated at all or if the publisher simply did not made the choice to engage in costly and time-consuming legal action, because of the lack of common sense to pursue this route and only option available to him at the moment.

Conclusion

Asking for 5 minutes of the alleged copyright owner’s time, who claims to own the rights and felt those rights to be violated to have a second look and option to resolve the situation in a civilized manner should not be too much in return for the preservation of hundreds of hours of time, unknown amounts of money, energy and love by the publishers and also the time spent by active members of the YouTube community who rate content, make comments, answer questions and help YouTube to rid itself of spam and illegal content.

Google cannot change current laws, which are in the case of copyright laws unfortunately ill-suited for this new environment and situation, which was not envisioned when the laws where put in place as they are to this date (which is my own personal opinion and subjective). There is work needed elsewhere. However, Google could make some more efforts to easy the tensions and reduce conflicts that result from these short comings and are also a result of their commercial services in form of a social video sharing web site called YouTube that pioneered the ways how audio-visual content of commercial as well as non-commercial nature is being consumed by millions of people around the world today and in the future.

I hope that my comments and recommendations make sense and be considered useful and realistic as I believe them to be and will make the life of everybody involved much less painful than it is today, if they should be followed through with and become implemented in the near future.

Regards,

Carsten Cumbrowski

Fresno, CA on April 8, 2010

Note: This letter will also be published publicly on my personal blog at RoySAC.com/blog.

That’s it. I hope I made sense. Comments and Feedback (also anonymously) are not only allowed but also encouraged, via the comment-form further down below.

YouTube Account CirqueDuSoleilGuru Suspended

 

Obituary Note for YouTube’s “CirqueDuSoleilGuru” Born: July 2008, Died: December 18, 2009 200+ Videos, Total video views: 3,244,071, Total ratings 5,240, Total comments posted to videos by users: 3,152, Almost 2,000 subscribers and hundreds of friends. CirqueDuSoleilGuru (aka YouTube.com/CirqueDuSoleilGuru) was a well respected and loved member of the YouTube community, not only because of the valuable content that he provided, but also because of his support and engagement beyond YouTube and the videos in the cause to support and promote the works of Cirque du Soleil. But the content was one important factor also. The average rating of all the videos uploaded to the account was a whopping “4.46” out of “5”. The sudden death was not only tragic, but also unexpected.  What’s now lost also with the death of CirqueDuSoleilGuru, represents hundreds upon hundreds of hours of work by me and other YouTube community members. All of which was destroyed and killed in cold blooded murder because of corporate greed, ignorance and disrespect of the average people, like me and you.

The YouTube Publisher Account (Type: Guru) “CirqueDuSoleilGuru” was suspended on December 18, 2009 by Google without notice or stating any reasons for taking such dramatic actions.

Two users and former subscribers to my channel already contacted me via other communication channels, like another YouTube account of mine or via private email and asked me what happened and how unhappy they are about this happening.

I honestly don't know what happened and why they suspended my YouTube account. I can only make wild speculations, but that is beyond the point.

What makes me mad is the fact that the account was in good standing, no warnings, had almost 2000 subscribers, 3.2 Mio video views, over 3,000 video comments and close to 300 videos and gets suspended without giving any reason or anything. No email, nothing. Support generally does ignore things like that. I know that from past experience, which made me a lot more careful, without success obviously.

It could be something that happened recently or something that happened months or longer ago. You simply don't know. Considering the status and activity (content) of the account, you would expect that they would at least tell you what the problem is that you get at least a chance to do something about it. Nope, hundreds of hours of my time and time of YouTube's users who commented on my videos gone. Not even worth a single email to them to let me know. The last email that I got was about a new subscriber to the channel.

The last Email that I sent to YouTube just a few days before my account was suspended was an alert to make them aware of a scam that was abusing their system to trick users into installing some malware on their computers. This was happening on December 14, 2009. I also blogged about that at my personal blog. Well, you can  see how grateful they are and how much they appreciate their users and how much they value the time that their users spend on producing and publishing videos on their web site.

Moving Forward

I have 3 other YouTube accounts, one has even more videos that my Cirque du Soleil channel had (but much less viewers and subscribers). I don't know if I will start a new Cirque related channel on YouTube. The videos are still up on my File-share for download. Many are also available on other Video sharing sites. I have not yet decided what to do. I am also thinking about not to do much with video sharing sites directly anymore, but host the videos myself on Amazon S3 and put them on a new web site that I would have to create for this stuff. Video sharing sites would then only be used to promote that new site (teasers etc.) and not depend on them for the actual content distribution that much anymore.

It would take a lot of time and eventually money as well. Things I don't have plenty of at the moment. To take the time, I would need to monetize it early on to cover my expenses and pay at least for some of my time. I know quite a bit about this kind of stuff and thus know that it is not so easy in this particular niche.

Regardless of this blog post, I have little hope that it will be resolved in a positive way, because YouTube/Google simply gives a crap about you. The traditional media outlet dinosaurs care even less about anything but how they can milk the consumer cow for hard cash as much as possible. With them is any discussion about the value of content and alternative options to come to terms with them a waste of time for everybody involved. For them is content, media and art nothing more (or less) than a bag of wheat, a commodity with a price label attached to it.

Appealing to their responsibilities in society falls on dumb ears, because they are not in business to do anything good for society, but to maximize profits for their share holders and for themselves.

I just watched yesterday a video about the history of YouTube (on YouTube) and had to laugh when they talked about the value and importance of "community" and the users who are active in it. Well, the video was not created by YouTube themselves, but some students. They obviously did not know better.

The thing that pisses me off the most is the fact that I finished 10 or so videos, branded with "YouTube's CirqueDuSoleilGuru" that I wanted to upload when I learned that my account was suspended. A "nice" Christmas present.

You could try to help and contact YouTube to ask them about my account as a caring and appreciative user, who liked the content of my channel. I have no idea, if that might trigger that they take a second look at it, but it is not hard to do, does not take too much of your time and who knows, might works. You are now the second user who contacted me because of that. Maybe others will start wondering too and could join in too. You don't have to do it of course, but I'd appreciate it really.

Doing What I Dared to Do

PS. I just used YouTube’s web form to request more information about the account suspension, which I also just found out about today, but have little hope to get anything back from there that would help in this situation, if I hear back anything from YouTube at all. So far YouTube/Google tends to follow the strategy of complete silence and ignorance when it is about unpleasant things they don’t want to cope with.

I did not want to speculate about why the account was suspended, but I found this post in Google Groups, which is interesting and says it all. There somebody stated it cold and clear that YouTube has the right to suspend any account at any time for any reason without any notice and that you are at their mercy from the moment when you created your YouTube account and agreed to their terms of services while doing so.

It also states that a typical reason for an account suspension is their “3-Strikes” rule, where a strike is ONE video where somebody complained about and it was removed without you fighting against it on the legal battlefront.

I had more than 3 movies that were removed from the account over the months and I stopped arguing with them in those cases, if there could be the possibility that the fair-use clause does apply. I did not involve a lawyer, heck no. I did all this stuff in my spare time as a hobby and to support Cirque du Soleil and the artists and not for profit. In some cases YouTube simply slammed additional ads over the video and shared the revenue from those ads with the alleged owner (or partial owner) of the content.

I also got contacted by companies and individuals about the content of some videos. A few even were unhappy at first, but then realized that what I was doing was not to do them any bad, but the exact opposite. Anger tended to turn into appreciation and acknowledgement of the work that I had done for them without them asking or compensating me.

Also Cirque officials contacted me through YouTube to send me information etc. in the hope that I would help them with the voluntary promotion of their stuff, if I liked it. This said, I doubt that Cirque du Soleil had any hand in this issue. You might would think otherwise, considering that the vast majority of the content at my CIrqueDuSoleilGuru channel was about or from Cirque du Soleil itself.

It’s all such a pain and waste.

Regards,

Carsten aka Roy/SAC aka Ex-CirqueDuSoleilGuru

Imagine The Beatles in Love and 20 Years Under the Sun

Since it went so nice with my publication of the Inside La Nouba documentary, I thought that I continue and also publish some other non-available/out of print Cirque du Soleil documentaries.

Imagine – The Beatles in Love

This is the 50+ minutes long BBC documentary "Imagine, the Beatles in LOVE" about the creation of the Cirque du Soleil show "The Beatles - LOVE", which is performed at the Mirage hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

It features commentary by the creators of the show, as well as the remaining Beatles members and the music producers Sir George Martin and his son Giles Martin. It also shows a lot of footage from the Cirque du Soleil show itself, acrobatics, rehearsals and more.

The documentary was broadcast on British television on December 27, 2006 and not officially released on DVD for purchase.

Check out the "Documentaries" or "Cirque on DVD" parts of my Cirque du Soleil primer article at http://www.roysac.com/cirque, which refers to a shop where you can purchase a bootleg copy of the documentary on DVD.

There you can also find the references to the great documentary about the show LOVE, which is actually available on DVD. It is called "All Together Now" and features over 2 hours of great and informative material about the show and the process of it's creation.

You can also download the entire documentary in .AVI video format (XVID/MP3, 624x368 pixels resolution) at http://www.mediafire.com/?w2dzbnznxgx (Beware! It's a 642 MB! file)

Watch the Individual Segments at YouTube.com

Note: There were some issues with the audio and video being out of sync. I re-uploaded all 6 parts of the documentary once more and it should be fine now. Please use the new links below (second bullet list). 

• Imagine The Beatles in Love - Part 1
• Imagine The Beatles in Love - Part 2
• Imagine The Beatles in Love - Part 3
• Imagine The Beatles in Love - Part 4
• Imagine The Beatles in Love - Part 5
• Imagine The Beatles in Love - Part 6

• Imagine The Beatles in Love - Part 1 fixed
• Imagine The Beatles in Love - Part 2 fixed
• Imagine The Beatles in Love - Part 3 fixed
• Imagine The Beatles in Love - Part 4 fixed
• Imagine The Beatles in Love - Part 5 fixed
• Imagine The Beatles in Love - Part 6 fixed

Cirque du Soleil 20 Years Under the Sun

This is the 58 minutes long BBC documentary "Cirque du Soleil - 20 Years Under the Sun" from 2005 that was created because of the 20th anniversary of Cirque du Soleil in the year before (2004). The documentary does not focus on any particular production of the Cirque, it's covering the whole spectrum that existed back then in 2004/2005.

If you are looking for a DVD version of this documentary, you won't have any luck, because it is not available for purchase. It never was. It was broadcast on BBC television and that was it.

There is a DVD related to the 20th anniversary celebration of Cirque du Soleil in 2004. The special show that they did in the city where their international headquarters is located, Montreal, Canada.

It is called "Soleil de Minuit" or in English "Midnight Sun". It is not a documentary. It's a special one-time only live performance in the streets of the city. Check out the "Special Performances" and "Cirque on DVD" parts of my Cirque du Soleil primer article series at http://www.roysac.com/cirque for more information and to find out where to buy the DVD online.

You can download the entire documentary video in .AVI format, 482 MB in size, 704x400 pixels resolution, codecs: XVID/MP3, at my MediaFire.com file share at: http://www.mediafire.com/?a0wykmtizc2

Watch the Individual Segments at YouTube.com

• Cirque du Soleil – 20 Years Under the Sun – Part 1
• Cirque du Soleil – 20 Years Under the Sun – Part 2
• Cirque du Soleil – 20 Years Under the Sun – Part 3
• Cirque du Soleil – 20 Years Under the Sun – Part 4
• Cirque du Soleil – 20 Years Under the Sun – Part 5
• Cirque du Soleil – 20 Years Under the Sun – Part 6

Enjoy!

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC and CirqueDuSoleilGuru

Cirque du Soleil Show Names and their Meanings

If you ever wondered what the often strange names of Cirque du Soleil shows mean and where they are coming from then you are not alone. Like the shows itself the name of it also has most of the time a very fascinating background story and meaning to it. Names are not chosen by Cirque quickly. Like all other elements of the show creation process, a lot of thoughts and considerations go into it.

Contents

• Alegría
• Banana Shpeel
• Believe
• Corteo
• Delirium
• Dralion
• KÀ
• Koozá
• La Magie Continue
• La Nouba
• Le Cirque Réinventé
• Love
• Mystère
• Nouvelle Expérience
• “O”
• Ovo
• Quidam
• Saltimbanco
• Soleil du Minuit
• Varekai
• Wintuk
• Zaia
• Zed
• Zumanity

Alegría is about a Kingdom without a King where everybody wants the power. The Red Man, who was the fool of the king, he thinks that he has the power. All the nostalgic beautiful birds who want the power; then you have the young and energetic and vigilant fast trackers. The flyers high up in the lights, the beautiful nymphs and contortionists all struggle for the power in this leaderless kingdom.

“Alegria” is the Spanish word for Joy, elation and jubilation.

Spelling the name:

Alegría (the “I” is a Latin lower case letter “I” with acute, Unicode: 0x00ED (237), in HTML í or í)

The show Banana Shpeel is a contemporary twist on Vaudeville in Chicago.

“Banana *peel”– from Banana Peel, a symbol of traditional slapstick comedy and the Yiddish word “Shtick”, meaning a comic theme or gimmick, derived from the German word “Stück” (Stueck), which translates to “piece” or “thing”.

Believe is the dark and gothic style magic show of Criss Angel in collaboration with Cirque du Soleil that is not like a traditional magic show that people are used to. It is also not like a traditional Cirque du Soleil show either. It is also not like Criss Angel’s TV show “Mindfreak”.

“Believe” is the secret word that the legendary magician and escape artist Harry Houdini was giving to his wife at his death-bed before he died in 1926 to enable her to expose charlatans claiming to be able to communicate with the people in the afterlife. Only he and she knew the code word and the self proclaimed mediums did not.

Corteo, which means "cortege" in Italian, is a joyous procession, a festive parade imagined by a clown. The show brings together the passion of the actor with the grace and power of the acrobat to plunge the audience into a theatrical world of fun, comedy and spontaneity situated in a mysterious space between heaven and earth.

Delirium is more like a music concert. Most of the music in the show are remixed versions of traditional and well known tracks of previous Cirque du Soleil shows. Also the acts that are performed to these remixed songs often are similar in look and feel as the act of the original show.

Delirium is a urban tale about an ordinary man (Bill) who experiences the issues of a words who is increasingly getting out of sync, believing to be just a dream. He sees reality from inside his own bubble and how it tries to find the balance between the virtualization of life that isolates people and the quest for love and harmony outside the virtual computer worlds.

Dralion is the fusion of ancient Chinese circus tradition and the avant-garde approach of Cirque du Soleil. The show's name is drawn from its two main symbols: the dragon, representing the East, and the lion, representing the West.

Dralion derives much of its inspiration from Eastern philosophy with its perpetual quest for harmony between humankind and nature.

KÀ is the story of two imperial twins who lost their parents, discover life and love on their journey to regain back their kingdom from the evil counselor and his son who invented a magic super weapon. They used this magic weapon to assume power of the people who helped them to take control over the kingdom of the twins. It is about the duality of KÀ, the power that has the ability to destroy and to create, war, love and the struggle in life itself.

KÀ stands for “Life Force” in Egyptian mythology and is one of the five parts that make up a human soul. The other four parts are LB = heart, Sheut = Shadow, REN = Name and BA = Personality.

KA is also the word for "Sun" or "King" in Sanskrit (Indian mythology), which is the title of Brahma (Hinduism).

Spelling the name:

KÀ (the “a” is a Latin capital letter “A” with grave, Unicode: 0x00C0 (192), in HTML À or À)

Koozá Is about getting back to the traditions of the Circus. It follows the centuries old structure of a circus performance, including the use of the massive door with curtains where performance appear from and disappear to between each act.

Spelling of the name:

Koozá (the “a” is a Latin lower case letter “a” with acute, Unicode: 0x00E1 (225), in HTML á or á) It can also be spelled in all upper-case letters like KOOZÅ (the “A” is a Latin capital letter “A” with a ring above, Unicode 0x00C5 (197), in HTML Å or Å)

La Magie Continue is French and translates to “The Magic Continues”

The show name La Nouba originates from the French phrase “faire la nouba,” which means to party, to live it up. It is a world where dreams and reality intertwine as the urban and circus worlds meet on stage. Blending acrobatics, dazzling choreography, whimsical characters and live music, La Nouba stimulates our imagination from beginning to end.

Le Cirque Réinventé is French and translates to English “Circus Reinvented“, which was modified to “We Reinvent the Circus”

Spelling of the name:

Le Cirque Réinventé (the first and last “e” in “Reinvente” are the Latin lower case letter “e” with acute, Unicode: 0x00E9 (233), in HTML é or é)

The Beatles “Love” starts with the last live performance of The Beatles on the roof at the Apple Studios in London on January 30, 1969. The Beatles songs itself inspired the acts of the Cirque performances, particularly their lyrics and their historic backgrounds or meanings to the individual members of the band.

The title “Love” is derived from The Beatles single “All you need is Love”, which is also the song for the shows final and closing.

Mystère is French and means "Mystery"

Spelling of the name:

Mystère (the first “e” is a Latin lower case letter “e” with grave, Unicode: 0x00E8 (232), in HTML è or è)

Nouvelle Expérience is French and translates to English “A New Experience”

Spelling of the name:

Nouvelle Expérience (the first “e” in “Experience” is the Latin lower case letter “e” with acute, Unicode: 0x00E9 (233), in HTML é or é)

“O” is inspired by the concept of infinity and the elegance of water's pure form. The name “O” also represents the expression “Oh” that humans use when they are struck with awe, excitement, surprise or pleasure.

OVO means "egg" in Portuguese. This timeless symbol of the life cycle and birth of numerous insects represents the underlying thread of the show. Graphically, OVO hides an insect in its name: The two letter "Os" represent the eyes while the letter "V" forms the nose.

Quidam is a nameless by-passer, a solitary person who lingers in the shadows ignored by normal people who rush past him without being noticed. Quidam represents nobody and everybody and the deep inner feelings and fears that are part of all of us. The young girl “Zoe” finds herself in a world of Quidam, full of anger and pain, trying to escape from it.

Quidam is Classical Latin and means "a certain; pl., some" or "anonymous passerby”.

Saltimbanco is about urban life in the city, about the high rise skyscrapers of downtown and the myriad kinds of people who are living, hustle and bustle in a modern day city.

Saltimbanco is derived from the Italian phrase “saltare in banco”, which translates to English “to jump on a bench”.

Soleil du Minuit is French and translates to English “Midnight Sun”. Although it was not exactly midnight when Cirque du Soleil performed their one-time special 20^th anniversary show in the streets of Montreal where Cirque has its head quarters; but it was already dark when the show reached its climax. The “Sun” represents the Cirque itself, the Cirque du Soleil or the Circus of the Sun.

Varekai is about the ancient Greek myth of Ikarus, who attempted to fly with wings he made out of wax and reach the sun, which melted the wings and caused Ikarus to fall from the sky as a result of it. The story of Varekai begins at the end of the ancient story with Ikarus falling from the sky into a group of forest people, which have established a stable society within the magic forest that is made of survivors, just like the circus artists themselves.

Varekai means “wherever” in the Romanian language spoken by the Gypsies, the people without a home who wander from place to place in order to survive, which is very much like circus life is.

Wintuk is a whirlwind winter adventure about a boy—Jamie—and his quest to find snow.

Jamie lives in an imaginary city where the arrival of winter has brought intense cold, but no snow! He interacts with a cast of high-energy urban street characters, including acrobats, dancers and talking lampposts. Jamie embarks on a journey to an imaginary North called Wintuk. He is joined by three companions—a female Shaman with magical powers, the girl he has fallen head over heels for and a timid young man called Wimpy, destined to discover his own courage. Jamie's goal: bring the snow back to where it belongs.

ZAIA is the dream of a young girl who journeys into space on a strange, yet familiar voyage of self-discovery. As she travels, she encounters the beauty of humanity and eventually brings it back with her to share with the inhabitants of earth.

The title of the show, “ZAIA”, comes from a Greek name meaning “life”. It also sounds close to “Gaia”, which is the name of the living and self-aware, spirit of the earth.

The name ZED is the name of the lead character of the show, the white fool called Zed. The inspiration for the show comes from the world of Tao, symbols, elements and also various characters, such as Zed.

Zumanity explores the sensual side of Cirque du Soleil and is the first and only Cirque du Soleil show that is designed for mature audiences only. It is provocative, sexual, esthetic, beautiful, lustful and emotional, touching every aspect of human sexuality that each of us wants to experience, but often does not, due to social codes that do not allow the free expression of your inner feelings and desires.

Zumanity deals with this conflict in a cabaristic way and lets people forget about the codes, at least for the duration of the show itself.

For more information about Cirque du Soleil check out my Cirque du Soleil Primer article.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC and CirqueDuSoleilGuru on YouTube.com