The first time Cirque du Soleil pitched its sky-blue-and-goldenrod-yellow big top on California soil, it was in Little Tokyo. The year was 1987; the targeted occasion, opening night of the Los Angeles Festival. According to Cirque founder-director Guy Laliberte, the entire future of the Montreal-based troupe was riding on that single show.
"If the critics didn't like us, we wouldn't have had the money to put gas in the trucks and get home," said Laliberte recently in San Francisco, where Cirque was playing to 98% capacity houses. "We were gambling our whole circus on a one-night deal."
That gamble paid off handsomely. Reviewers loved Cirque du Soleil's youthful one-ring extravaganza, a glossy animal-free melange of high-wire and teeterboard stunts, rambunctious clowning and thrilling acrobatics, all wrapped up in fanciful costumes and choreographed to a synthesized rock beat. Audiences loved it too, packing the 1,756-seat tent nightly. The circus wound up with plenty of gas money for the ride home to Canada. And they had no trouble returning in 1988, this time to perform at the Santa Monica Municipal Pier on the first leg of a triumphant six-city U.S. tour.
Cirque du Soleil is back at the same spot offering another lively demonstration of the uses of enchantment through Oct. 15. Or, as its distinctive print ads would have it, "\o7 la magie continue.\f7 . . ."
But stage magic alone can't account for the wildfire success of this young circus troupe. In just five years of operation, Soleil has blossomed from a small upstart circus into a major North American touring attraction. It now has 150 employees, a budget in excess of $10 million, an annual audience of more than 500,000, and a mystique that just won't quit.
"We're successful because we're different," said Laliberte. "We came from the street as a bunch of 23-, 24-year-old kids. I think we're changing the whole image of circus. Coming to Cirque du Soleil is like going to make a picnic."
Cirque du Soleil's popularity, and its special brand of polished whimsy, have a lot to do with Laliberte's exuberant stewardship. A former stilt-walker and fire-eater, the blond, puckish 30-year-old combines a street artist's freewheeling spirit with a sharp instinct for business.
Speaking in English flavored by a French-Canadian accent, Laliberte described himself as "a great conceptor. Cirque du Soleil to me is a show inside a concept."
