Las Vegas Weekly

December 18, 2009 · 9:02 AM

Criss Angel celebrates his birthday and Mindfreak renewal

By Robin Leach

Criss Angel in his Cirque du Soleil show Believe at the Luxor.

Photo: Tomasz Rossa/Cirque du Soleil

Congratulations to Believe star Criss Angel, who has a double celebration this weekend -- his 42nd birthday and the renewal of his top-rated A&E series Mindfreak for a sixth season, which we reported here at Vegas DeLuxe on Monday.

I’ll join Criss tomorrow night for the onstage birthday celebration at the Luxor. The hotel’s top chefs have designed a large cake, and slices will be served to the audience at the late show. Luxor President Felix Rappaport will mark the occasion with a special gift presentation onstage.

Criss revealed this week that he has suffered two minor shoulder muscle tears during his current, continuing and strenuous schedule of performing Believe for Cirque du Soleil at night and rehearsing seven new illusions being added to the show in March. We’re sworn to secrecy about the mind-blowing illusions, but I can tell you that they are totally unique and fiery.

Once Clark County fire and building inspectors have signed off on all the necessary safety precautions, we’ll start to tell you about the new illusions as we get closer to the March launch.

Criss has already added an amazing new trick titled “Enigma,” which I’ll see for the first time tomorrow. Next week here at Vegas DeLuxe, we’ll have an extraordinarily candid interview with Gilles Ste-Croix, Cirque’s VP of artistic creation, about the extraordinary embellishments to Believe in the next 90 days.

In addition to the new look for Believe, Criss has already begun work on the initial creative ideas for the new Mindfreak season. He’s toying with one idea of working with deadly tarantulas and seeing if he can make them vanish and then reappear from inside his mouth, and another death-defying project on the outside of the Luxor pyramid also is being considered.

We’ll have the full photo report of the Mindfreak birthday celebration right here on Monday, so be sure to check back then.

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

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