Holiday wishes abound at Cirque Club this month. No less than 12 ways to send electronic messages, available in either Traditional Cards, Creative Cards (that add a special Cirque-ey note to your message), Animated cards, as well as two special Video cards – the first featuring performers from “O”, Mystère, and KÀ, the other featuring La Nouba. These greetings in multiple languages are especially nice. The cards can be found at: < http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/go.asp?p=3319&l=en >. Get ’em fast, they will probably not last past the season.
CirqueClub has a nice article on Saltimbanco’s performance for the Pope, and the next installment of their “History” series, looking at Alegria and Cirque du Monde. At the KÀ website, they have posted two more entries in Armand Thomas Stage Manager’s Log, which looks to be
the last of them. But the site also covers the first night well, with a long article and three photo galleries. And in their Press Release section they announce the creative team behind Cirque 2005, and even have a release talking about Cirque Club itself!
In the Boutique, we’re just starting to see how sophisticated their new site is. You now select the country you’re from, and the site sorts items and displays availability and prices for your country. For example, the new DVD of “Midnight Sun” is available (though out of stock) for Canada residents, while it doesn’t show up at all on the U.S.A. side. That might lead us to believe it will soon be issued by a stateside distributor but you can never tell.
CIRQUE DU SOLEIL AND ME – There is an extraordinary contest in CirqueClub. Called “Cirque du Soleil and Me”, if offers Quebecers only (sorry rest of Canada, the US, and the World) the opportunity to win a “dream” with Cirque du Soleil. Want to train a day with Cirque? Play in their band? Give the safety announcements at a performance? Here’s your chance.
The premise is simple; They are looking for 200 word-maximum stories, anecdotes or special moments folks have had with Cirque du Soleil. (They also want to know what your “dream” is, maximum 50 words.) They will pick 10 stories each week for 7 weeks (that all win Le Best of CDs) and publish them on Cirque Club. Cirque Club members then get to vote for their favorite. The final seven (that all win copies of the “20 Years Under The Sun” coffee-table book), will go into the finals, that are also voted upon by Cirque Club. The grand prize winner gets their “dream.”
Entries are accepted for seven weeks, starting Mondays on January 4 and ending February 20 The 10 weekly candidates will be posted the following Mondays, starting on January 17 and ending March 6. The seven finalists go head-to-head in a Grand Prize vote from March 14-20. You can vote for one story per week, so check back each week to read 10 new stories and vote!
But heed the rules – there are eleven pages of them! (Somebody was really thinking this contest through.) The maximum value of the “dream” is $5,000.00 CDN. It also must be “achievable.” And it “must not include specific Cirque du Soleil people” (So nix on meeting Guy Laliberte in person). Cirque has the right to make alterations to the “dream” to make it achievable, and if that’s unacceptable to the winner there is a “Compensation Grand Prize” (basically a weekend in
Montreal with an IHQ tour, dinner with artists, and tickets to the 2005 touring show).
And don’t worry about the Fascination! staff entering, we’re US-based. Not that we don’t have a bunch of fun Cirque stories to tell, we just couldn’t keep them to 200 words!
In Cirque Club marketing messages:
Anne-Josée wrote about Varekai’s 1000th peformance — “The weeks have just flown by and with only 11 days left of our stay, it is almost time to bid you a fond farewell. The cast and crew want me to tell you how much they loved being in Dallas and how much they will miss it. If you have a ticket for this Friday’s (12/3) matinee performance, you will be taking part in Cirque du Soleil history as Varekai is presented for the 1,000th time. I thought you might be interested in
a few facts about what goes on behind the scenes.
Did you know?
Since its premiere in 2002, the tour has visited 18 cities and traveled over 15,000 miles.
Over 310,000 bags of popcorn have been sold.
The kitchen has served more than 420,000 meals.
Five performers and three musicians have never missed a show.
The show has used over 17,000 pounds of dry ice, and over 1,000 green LED lights for the fireflies.
Over 500,000 red petals have fallen from the Varekai sky, and many more are sure to fall…”
Above text courtesy of Cirque Club.
