10TH ANNIVERSARY CIRQUE DU SOLEIL

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Ten years! Only ten years to make the conquest of a very vast public, in Occident as in the East. It is more than one turn of force; it is truly an exploit.

page 7-8 --    But what can be done in one ten year period compared to all the time which has passed in the night with time? Almost nothing, when one thinks about it. But ten years of passion, with the desire to have pleasure, the taste to laugh and the chance to have fun, it is a different thing. There one speaks about a completely extraordinary adventure, an adventure filled with strong emotions: that of the Cirque du Soleil. Our ten years of existence have really been beautiful. For this reason, today we celebrate. With this book, we make a gift of our anniversary. We want to leave our mark on this small planet which is the Earth. A mark in the honor of all these sellers of happiness, of these hundreds of people, these workers, these collaborators who, since our first stammering, have contributed, in a thousand and one ways, with the radiation of Cirque du Soleil. A mark in the honor of all these people whom we have met since our debut, of people of different nationalities cherishing, like us, the rigor of living in a better world. It would be difficult to name them all in this book, even more difficult to speak in detail about all the crucial stages and determinations about ten prime years. We are not yet complete in our memories: perhaps one will speak again about it one of these days. Today, all that we seek to do by publishing this book, is to share with you some of the beautiful moments of our short existence. For us, this commemorative book is also the occasion of saying thank you to our millions of witnesses. Thank you for the applause, for the bursts of laughter, thank you, especially, to have opened your heart and imagination. Let us say to you how much one is happy when one sees you leaving the tent with all these stars which shine in your eyes. These ten years of existence have been for us the occasion to realize many dreams, of which one is proper - youth: that to be made a place in this world. Too often, for many people, this dream is never realized. And when it is realized, it is at a large price with the generations that hold the reins of  capacity. The first steps of Cirque were done with this price: it was necessary to use  all of our charms and all of our will. Very often, there is the tent to dictate procedure to us, but we had our vision, our desires and we knew what we wanted. Today, we have our place with the sun and a roof above our heads, but there was a time when the street was our house. At this time, we wanted to change the world. We learned, with the early years, that nothing is never acquired freely. Welcome to our world... with the thousand and one imaginations. -- Guy Laliberte, founder

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    Live by the legend of Alexis the Trotter, Gilles Ste-Croix, who traversed on stilts the distance of 100 km between Baye Saint-Paul and Quebec in order to pile up funds and to captivate the popular attention.

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    - Those which are able to be held on stilts, can traverse in all
directions on the ground without being held back by the mountains and the rivers... They are, in imagination, able to fly, able to reach the islands of the Immortals -
--- P' ao-Pou Tseu

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    Ra, Sun King, whispered to me of a great empire, the sun bright over us. These shards shine of our mysteries. Husband of the rain. His act of love was the seed of this supreme chaotic Heat and Light which shines down upon the ground and renews it. - S.D.

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    Joseph Campbell told the history of the Zen master who  prepared to sermonize his disciples. As soon as he opened his mouth, a bird sang. And the master replies: " The sermon has just been known. "

    The creators of Cirque du Soleil transmit an identical message of pure happiness. In an everyday world, they offer the grace of a bird in full flight, the joy of its song and the perfection of its music to create a perfect happiness, even if this is only for a few hours.

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    This group of Quebecois young public entertainers, for a dozen years, have been under a good star.
    Their personal tent was what was within them: youth, audacity,  instinct, imagination and an insane talent. Their alliance in entertainment was not done in only one night, but during a series of little mysterious events and without apparent links.
    Moving by horse, an avant-garde of the Quebecois public entertainers tookits rise during the Seventies. A group of young waders, fire-eaters and traveling acrobats of any kind, entered Baie-Saint-Paul in 1982, a festival which they call " Fete Foraine. " The Waders are not alone and other companies are formed successfully: groups of jugglers, motorcyclists and
acrobats. They are noisy, eccentric, and impossible to ignore.
    In Quebec, the time is effervescent, full of energy and creativity.
Fortuitous meetings will ignite with life and coming together will be the men and the women who will become the founders of Cirque du Soleil. The history of their successes were not very probable, for they were created of sagacious invention and a certain good sense of smell.
    What had started modestly at Baie-Saint-Paul, on the edges of the Saint Lawrence river, had exploded, metamorphed into a true circus, in a country where the tradition of the circus did not exist.
    Today, the artists and the collaborators of Cirque du Soleil are engaged in only one company: to call in question the rules of the game and the traditional ideas. They are devoted to the invention of an extraterrestrial world, a world of spiritual forces which defy the limits of reality. Their goal is to go beyond the ordinary one to provide, in the ritual circle of the track, a fast shock of dazzling processes which upset waiting of possibility completely, exploits of an audacity, a refinement such as a burlesque masquerade, which they project into us in the free and intense field of imagination.
    The illusion is not always easy to establish. It represents the hours of creative and powerful collaboration, orchestration with attention,
synchronized aide and supported by a tribe of malicious flounces.
    These strange childish creatures, which seem to have come from a planetless evil and more innocent, are the adrenaline of Cirque du Soleil. The groups  of strange reality: humble technician with the most insane clown - all the members of this vast family are direct on same the idea: valiantly reinvent a new world of the circus.
    From this chrysalis emerges a circus of rock'n'roll, young and androgyny, that avoid the glare of skeptics avoids without animals, but with a childish horde lead by the King of Insanity, a king who takes us to a starting point where we meet the King of the Monkeys of Opera de Pekin and which represent the King of Sortileges, the King of the Artists, especially, of the imaginary one.
    The true magic of this joint effort, recalling that the limits of
possibility are defined only by our will to believe. If these acrobats,
trapezists,  and contortionists are convinced  they can widen the limits of the physical world and spring with-life, we will follow them. We cannot resist. Cirque du Soleil is a great adventure and a marvelous one, a mysterious voyage which has fun with those who doubt this undeniable force of
conviction - S.D.

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    The aurora borealis invades the sky over Baie-Saint-Paul. The sun shone down strange, beautiful luminous rays of light. During the representation, green reflections and silver whirls continued in the air.
        It was a spectacle of light magic and hypnotizing, which obliged the public into sharing their attention between the entertainers on the scene and the playful recreations of nature on the horizon. The effect was awe-inspiring, as if something supernatural offered a celestial spectacle to mark the birth of this merry festival on ground.
    Fete Foraine was appreciated. The concept of a series of spectacles, with workshops of initiation and formation, the witnesses were encouraged to take part and were full of pleasant surprise. It was premiere time in Quebec, where so many public entertainers - approximately 75 - were reunited during the same exact event. The witnesses were particularly moved, amazed by what
they saw. These public entertainers with big hopes, wearing vibrant coloursand that were merely foreigners in the commune, could finally divert the population's attention.
    Seven days later, at the end of the last spectacle of Fete Foraine which was held in a large arena, nature was in its full beauty and mystery again. With the sound of the final note, a storm burst into being, striking down thunder. The rain fell in hard torrents. Suddenly, an electric breakdown plunged the room in total obscurity. Candles were lit. The public dispersed and the artists of Fete Foraine had to leave. But there was a mystical calmness in the air. The flames wavered. Large shades grew blurred. And that evening, in the interior of the cavernous arena, something there changed forever. The people who later were going to find Cirque du Soleil sensed intuitively that it was somehow a master key to something very big. Their destiny took shape; the sky and the ground conspired to send a message to them. It was premiere time but not the end for  these traveling acrobats would make a pact with nature.
    Two years are hardly anything before Cirque du Soleil,  but for its founders, it is as mythical a time as in 1982 in Baie-Saint-Paul. - S.D.

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    " Brass band in the circus? Never in my life! " I always said that music is a evocative and no descriptive medium. And I always have thought that the music, including that of the circus, must, first of all, be good music. If all is good, and the visual one is good, more and more can be done. "
    " I have enough work in the street to know that if one is not
interesting, spectators will give their money to someone else. You should seize their attention. It is the same thing with music. Since there was no tradition of  circus in Quebec, we had in front of us an infinite choice. "
    " The synthesizers are an illusion. Like films. They adapt well to the ideas and the emotions of the Cirque du Soleil. They reproduce musical sounds but we also know that they are only imitations of what is authentic. They give us the illusion to hear a violin, a trumpet. We want to believe in it but, at the same time, we know that it is not real. As with the cinema. When I was six years old, I believed that the movie stars lived right there on the screen. It is an impression which I still keep and which I like to preserve.
" - S.D.