The privately owned company, with estimated revenues of
approximately $500 million, has rarely faced significant setbacks,
although it did drop plans to open a chain of entertainment
facilities during the recent recession. Other than that, it seems
to have had a permanent case of the Midas touch. The oldest current
Cirque du Soleil production, the touring show Saltimbanco, began in
1992 in
North America and visited
Europe and several countries in
the
Asia-Pacific region before returning recently to Europe, where
it is again playing to sold-out audiences.
Today, Cirque du Soleil has more than 2,500 employees, including
600 performers, and has entertained 40 million people in 90 cities
around the globe. Yet, somehow, in all this growth it has remained
true to the founders' original vision of creating a circus that
celebrates human potential and never rested in the pursuit of
ever-more-startling entertainment.
IT ALL STARTED in
Quebec 20 years ago with a group of
stilt-walkers called the Le Club des Talons Hauts. One was a
20-year-old native Quebecer and veteran street performer named Guy
Laliberté, who also played the accordion and breathed fire, and
possessed less obvious talents for organization, fundraising,
marketing, and showmanship. Laliberté and others expanded the
stilt-walking focus, and in the early 1980s formed another troupe
of circus arts performers called La Fête Foraine of
Baie-Saint-Paul. A couple of years later, the astute Laliberté
convinced the government of Quebec to fund a more ambitious show
for the province's 450th anniversary. The French name translated as
"Circus of the Sun."
Cirque du Soleil's performance in that 1984 celebration began its
tradition of exciting audiences and critics alike. The show
contained many traits that would later spur observers to credit it
with reinvigorating the business and art of the circus. Most
obviously, there were no animals. Rather than three rings of
bicycle-riding bears and dancing elephants, the show relied on a
single ring hosting human acrobats, tumblers, and trapeze and
high-wire artists, all accompanied by original music and wearing
close-to-the-edge costumes.