Where magic is pure and fantasy real, where dreams cease being just dreams...

Premiere: May 7, 1987 Type: Touring Director: Franco Dragone Composer: René Dupéré & Benoit Jutras Location: No Longer Performed Closed: December 30, 1990

{1988 Visual}

Beginning in LaSalle in 1987 and ending in Paris in 1990, Le Cirque Réinventé (or "We Reinvent the Circus"), is the show that brought Cirque du Soleil into the limelight, creating nothing less than a phenomenon. Cirque banked its success on the North American West by performing outside their native Canada at the Los Angeles Festival in summer 1987. From there the show cross-crossed the North American Continent before picking up stakes and traveling across the pond to England and France. By today's standards the production is a simple one, without story or theme, but if you look hard enough you can see a simple thread, the beginnings of a tapestry.

The theme centers around a small group of people, called Ordinary People. These people are dressed in everyday clothes, milling about and exchanging looks of amazement with the audience at where they have found themselves. They have been drawn into a realm of fantasy - not knowing whether they are dreaming or whether what they see is real. The truth is that these Ordinary People begin to respond to the forces of this realm, to let out the folly and playfullness buried deep inside them. And they begin to show us that this playfullness is inside of us as well. They begin to dance about... Joined by the Queen of the Night and her helpers (the Infants), she produces the atmosphere from which the transformed people play out their destiny. With the help of the ringmaster transformed into Ti-Claude, he will guide you towards your destiny. Our destiny.

Le Cirque Réinventé has won many awards including - La Rose d'Or 1989, Montreux, Switzerland; Emmy Award 1989, United States; four Gemini Awards 1989, Canada; Ace Award 1990, National Cable Television Association, United States; Silver Medal 1990, and the 32nd New York International Film and TV Festival.