"The time is ripe to dump on Cirque du Soleil,” a Time magazine critic wrote on October 14, 1996, in a review of their latest production Quidam, staged at Santa Monica, California. He admitted his bias was based on the fact that the Montréal-based company, with so many successes since its first U.S.A. tour in 1987, logically must have lost “its old street-theater purity,” but confessed he was wrong. “This,” he wrote, “is a wordless drama; it transforms motion into emotion. It is beyond circus, beyond theater; it makes the incredible visible.”

His reference to street theatre was accurate, for Cirque du Soleil, which has performed in at least a hundred countries on four continents, started out just that way. In 1982, some 75 young street entertainers, acrobats, stilt-walkers, fire-eaters, jugglers, and musicians staged a six-day event called La Fête Forraine at Baie St-Paul, a resort town 90 kilometres east of Québec City. An even-better show, in 1983, prompted the Québec government to give the troupe a grant to stage a show in association with festivities marking the 450th anniversary, in 1984, of Jacques Cartier's discovery of Quebec.
 

	Three enchanting views from Quidam, Cirque du Soleil’s spectacular touring stage show that performed throughout North America for three years, 1996-98. [Photo, courtesy Al Seibo via Cirque du Soleil]

Guy Laliberté, who had performed and directed La Fête and who was largely responsible for obtaining the grant, renamed the group and staged the show under a tent with seating for 800. Laliberte, then 25, was already a show business veteran. He had sung in choirs in his native St-Bruno, studied accordion and piano, taken tai chi and various folk dance courses, attended workshops to handle giant puppets and walk on stilts, and, at 18, organized and toured with a folk music group for 40 performances throughout the province. At 19, he spent nine months performing as a musician, singer, and storyteller at festivals, bars, and theatres in Europe and, on returning home, continued to study new theatrical skills, including fire eating with a Hawaiian troupe, as well as to perform on stage, radio, and TV in Québec.

Joining him as creative director of Cirque du Soleil was Gilles Ste-Croix, a performer and artistic director of the Baie St-Paul group he had earlier established in the early 1980s. To handle administration and computer services, Laliberté approached former St-Bruno schoolmate, Daniel Gauthier, who, at age 23, had established a consulting firm, Gesco informatique.
 

Cirque du Soleil’s president and CEO, Daniel Gauthier, administrates a company that has, within only a decade, established permanent presence in Europe and the United States. In Canada, there are some 350 full-time employees at Cirque’s Montréal headquarters. [Photo, courtesy Ronald Maisonneuve via Cirque du Soleil]

The 50 performances staged at Québec City in 1984 were, by their own admission, “a bit ragged” but successful enough for them to plan a tour of Ontario in 1985. Calling themselves, for the Ontario tour, the Sun Circus, they were not generally recognized, played only to appreciative but slim audiences, and lost money. A further grant from the Quebec government, however, and a move to new quarters in Montreal later that year, enabled them to perform at Vancouver’s Expo 86 as well as in Ottawa, Toronto, Montréal, Québec City, and some smaller communities to turn a profit in 1986.

An ever-audacious Laliberté talked organizers of the 1987 Los Angeles Festival into including them, knowing that, if they failed, it would be necessary to sell the 1,500 seat yellow and blue big top tent to finance their return to Montréal. But the opposite occurred. Critics raved, and audiences flocked to see Cirque Réinventé at Los Angeles, San Diego, and Santa Monica. In 1988, New York, Washington, San Francisco, and a return to Santa Monica were booked, and, in 1989, audiences in Miami, Chicago, and Phoenix were added to the tour.
 

Gilles Ste-Croix, director of creation for Cirque du Soleil, has caught the world off guard with his troupe’s gravity-defying performances and heart-stopping contortions of exceptional grace. [Photo, courtesy Ronald Maisonneuve via Cirque du Soleil]

In 1990, Nouvelle Expérience, a new show, was launched in Montreal under a tent now seating 2,500. It then went on a 19-month tour that drew an audience of 1.3 million throughout Canada and the United States and won the 1989 Drama Desk Award in New York as a “unique theatrical experience.”

Cirque Réinventé crossed the Atlantic in 1990 to play in London and Paris, and then, in 1992, to join a Swiss group, Cirque Knie, to appear in over 60 cities and towns in Switzerland. A collage of the best acts was also assembled to spend four months in Tokyo and seven other cities in Asia while Nouvelle Expérience settled down at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas for a year-long stay.
 

Guy Laliberté, founding president of Cirque du Soleil that today employs some 1250 people worldwide, has been a show business veteran ever since he performed for nine consecutive months in night clubs, festivals, and theatres in Europe, at only 19 years of age. [Photo, courtesy Cirque du Soleil]

In 1993, a ten-year contract was signed with Mirage Resorts to stage Mystère, at Las Vegas. Saltimbanco was launched in Montreal and was seen by 1.4 million people over its own 19-month tour of Canada and the United States. It went to Tokyo in 1994, the same year that Cirque du Soleil – to mark its tenth anniversary – published a book that explained in part the reasons for its success.

“Be audacious,” wrote Laliberté, who retained the title of president fondateur when Daniel Gauthier became president and CEO in 1990. It is necessary “to challenge old notions, to force new ways of thinking...“ explains directeur de la création Gilles Ste-Croix, who now seeks talent from around the world. Franco Dragone, who came from Europe to join the group in 1985 and has directed many of the productions since, described Cirque du Soleil as “a great adventure, a magical mystery tour that thumbs its nose at all who would deny that power of sheer conviction.”

Conviction they have in large measure and for good reason. Revenues realized in 1996 amounted to $150 million. Long-term contracts have been signed to open a circus-style show at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida, in 1998, the same year a newly conceived aquatic show will be launched as a permanent fixture at the five-star Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. In 1999, another long-term contract will be realized with the opening of a permanent theatre in Berlin. Canadian audiences will have the opportunity of being the first to see a new production now being developed at Cirque du Soleil's $30 million studio and headquarters building opened in Montreal in 1997.

Mel James