By MARK NORRIS(Dallas Morning News)

After last year's 30th anniversary reunion of the TV show Dallas at Southfork Ranch was marred by poor planning and pricey tickets promising access to the stars that never occurred, the actors vowed to be more careful about any future events.

That promise is likely to be tested as a nonprofit agency has put together a new Dallas event – and is soliciting the fans who attended the November function. It promises smaller crowds and time with cast members, but at nearly double the ticket price of the Southfork event.

"Of course people are going to be concerned about another event this scale," said Colin Hunter, webmaster of Ultimate Dallas.com, a large online group of Dallas fans.

The new event, promoted as "The Ewing New Year's Eve Safari," is being held at a "42-acre private reserve" in the Florida Everglades by the Florida-based J. Timothy Hogan Foundation.

Jeanne Jackson, vice president of the foundation whose goal is suicide prevention, said she attended the Southfork event and met people there whom she kept up with afterward. It's that group of people whom she began notifying of this new event around the start of June.

But fan reaction has been anything but welcoming. In message board postings on UltimateDallas.com and e-mails to The Dallas Morning News, fans said the ticket prices organizers set were outrageous.

An all-access VIP ticket is $1,995, with the cheapest ticket $895. Those prices do not include hotel stays or airfare. The most expensive ticket at the November event was $1,000 and the cheapest $100.

Hunter said his site would not endorse or get involved with the Florida event until he was convinced all promises could be kept and the price structure was fan friendly.

"Our duty is to the fans," Hunter said. "We won't promote anything that would be less than 100 percent."

Jackson said the event is not a Dallas reunion, rather a fund-raiser for the foundation that just happens to feature the Dallas cast.

As of now, it appears few if any of the show's cast member plan to participate.

By Techtree.com

YouTube has signed a deal with Sony for showing full-length movies and TV shows from Sony. Also, the company is in talks with other big studios for adding more content to the movies and TV shows line-up. Full-length movies can be chosen from the list at http://www.youtube.com/movies, while TV shows can be found at the http://www.youtube.com/shows landing page. At last, YouTube has taken a giant step towards officially providing authorized content, instead of letting users post bootlegs and legit videos.

In November last year, YouTube was in the limelight for their endeavor to offer full-length movies. Now, with the recently announced deals, the current list of a dozen movies and TV show episodes will rocket up to over 700 movies and thousands of TV show episodes.

Casino Royale (1967), Toy Soldiers, and Cliffhanger are a few of the several blockbuster Hollywood movies added to YouTube. While the shows include Married with Children, T.J. Hooker, and I Dream of Jeannie. Unfortunately, all the movies and shows are not available for Indian audiences at the moment.

Dancer and choreographer Louis Van Amstel competed on seasons 1, 2, 3 and 6 of "Dancing with the Stars," sashaying alongside partners Trista Sutter, Lisa Rinna, Monique Coleman and Priscilla Presley. He also choreographed the subsequent tours that followed.

Now he is at the helm directing, choreographing and performing in "Ballroom with a Twist," which, with host Barbara Eden, will be presented at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora on April 25.

Van Amstel has a different take on the excitement of a live performance.

"The least-exciting thing for me is the directing and choreography," he said. "Five minutes before show time, it is all in the hands of the dancers, the singers, the stage managers, etc. But before that, the satisfaction is in seeing it all come together. We work on things that are problematic, and I give the cast notes for corrections. Then, when I see them add their personalities, my enthusiasm increases and I think 'We have a show.'

And what a show it is. "Ballroom with a Twist" features 14 of the world's champion competitive ballroom dancers, along with celebrity guest host Barbara Eden and singing performances by two "American Idol" finalists: Anthony Fedorov and Mikalah Gordon.

Van Amstel brings the same passion, expertise and excitement to "Ballroom with a Twist" as he exhibited on television with his celebrity partners and as the choreographer of the live "Dancing With the Stars" tour. "Ballroom with a Twist" pushes the boundaries of ballroom dance, infusing it with intense energy.

"We show every side of ballroom dancing," Van Amstel said. "We show the audience that you can dance to classical music, music from musicals, Latin music and pop music. We are pushing the boundaries a little bit."

In addition, Van Amstel will dance with professional ballroom dancer Irina Boubnovskaya and With Barbara Eden.

Eden is one of America's most endearing and enduring stars, having starred in dozens of feature films, television series and made-for-TV movies.

Eden's long-running series "I Dream of Jeannie" has been on television screens globally for 40 uninterrupted years since beginning its first-year network run on NBC in 1965.

"As a performer, I get really excited five minutes before show," he said. "I still have anxiety. ... That is because you live your art. When a painter finishes a painting, you look at it and it is not really yours anymore. As a performer, you experience the art over and over again."