The traffic in and out of the parking lot is backed up beyond view. But no one, on this steamy July evening at a suburban Quebec City shopping centre, is here for the sales at La Baie or Sears. Even the most radical end-of-season markdowns are no match for the blue-and-yellow big top nearby. The Cirque has come to town. And not just any town.
The Cirque du Soleil had its coming-out here in 1984, an ad hoc array of street performers banding together to put on a show. That was 70 million spectators ago. Now the slick entertainment machine whose trunks bear stamps from Vegas to Shanghai has come home with Kooza, the newest of its ever-expanding stable of thrill-a-second shows. From the fancy porta-potties with running water to the mesmerizingly staged acrobatics, backed up by a live orchestra and original score, this is blockbuster theatre, without a carny in sight. You can't blame the hometown crowd for being easily won over.
Still, Kooza may or may not live up to its billing as an exploration of "fear, identity recognition and power." For Canada's biggest cultural export, a somersault is never just a somersault—it must mean something. In Kooza, now half-way through a two-month run in Toronto, the flip might represent "the duality between good and bad." In Quidam, the 11-year-old touring show that just made history by playing in China—the acrobatic equivalent of fruitfully carrying coal to Newcastle—it might connote the "nameless person who lives lost amidst the crowd in an all-too anonymous society." Indeed, there is no concept too lofty for the Cirque. Not even this one: Best. Canadian company. Ever.
It hardly matters that few critics buy into the Cirque's New Age philosophizing. Nor, apparently, does it matter if audiences do, as long as they continue to fork out for a ticket. And do they ever. The best seats for Kooza—which is just a tent show, after all—go for $225. And yet, the Cirque has twice extended Kooza's current Toronto run, most recently to Oct. 7.
A Kooza performer trains on-site in Quebec City, where the Cirque first took flight (Sylvain Dumais)
How does the Cirque do it? "Part of the greater success of the Cirque is its being able to identify trends and creative elements that the world wants but that it just doesn't know it wants because it hasn't seen them yet. It's almost mystical," says Brad Wavra, senior vice-president of touring at Live Nation, the Los Angeles-based concert promoter that is the Cirque's partner on Delirium, the troupe's first arena production.
The big risk, of course, is that the world eventually gets bored with the Cirque's particular brand of spectacle. There are already lots of Cirque-haters, who think it's pretentious and overhyped. Undaunted, the Cirque has ratcheted up its rate of production, launching a couple of new shows every year. In addition to the eight that are currently touring and the six staged at permanent venues in Las Vegas and Orlando, two more Vegas shows are in the works. And the Cirque's touring shows are moving into ever-smaller markets—Saltimbanco just played in St. John's, a market the troupe has never visited before. Within the next couple of years, the Cirque will sink roots in Macao, New York, Tokyo and Dubai. And it is insinuating itself ever more deeply into the collective consciousness by showing up in unexpected places—such as its unorthodox cameo in this past summer's bawdy Hollywood hit Knocked Up.
It's no wonder the Cirque has become a favourite of business school professors around the world, who use it to teach about managing exponential growth, innovation, globalization and error avoidance. Robert David, a professor of business strategy at McGill University's Desautels Faculty of Management, wrote a case study on the Cirque in 2004 whose title asked "Can It Burn Brighter?" David worried that the Cirque might overextend itself, diluting its brand value. But that was before the company came up with the idea of adapting tried-and-true content that comes with a base of diehard fans, as it did with the Beatles-themed Love that opened in Vegas last year. Next up in this vein are permanent and touring productions based on Elvis Presley songs, which will premiere in 2009. Like Disney, the Cirque has proven adept at delivering old content in imaginative new ways. "They have done a great job of not falling into the trap I laid out in the case study," David concludes. "They managed to continue the excitement by teaming up with these partners."
1
