Guy Laliberté, one of Cirque du Soleil's founders, dropped out of school at 14 and honed his accordion-playing and fire-eating skills while wandering in Europe as a teenager. After returning to his native Québec in the early '80s, he teamed up with a troupe of stilt walkers, jugglers, dancers and musicians in the artists' colony of Baie-St-Paul. Laliberté and the group's founder, Gilles Ste-Croix, formed a street circus they called Le Club des Talons Hauts (The High Heels Club).
Adding Laliberté's school chum Daniel Gauthier to the partnership, the group was looking to spread its wings. Rebuffed by some 50 lenders, Laliberté turned, in desperation, to the Québec government—which just happened to be looking for someone to stage a show for the 450th anniversary celebration of Jacques Cartier's discovery of Canada. The entrepreneurs presented an idea for a show they called Cirque du Soleil. Bankroll in hand, they took the performance throughout the province and, eventually, to cities all over Canada.
Laliberté then took a tremendous chance, risking the group's future on an opportunity to perform for the first time in the United States. An arts festival in Los Angeles offered them top billing, but no fee. It cost every penny the group had to get the performers and their equipment to Los Angeles, but “We Reinvent the Circus” was a huge success. And it's a good thing it was, since there otherwise would have been no money for the trip home.
The rest is entertainment history. Cirque du Soleil moved on to tour additional U.S. cities. New productions crossed the Atlantic to Europe and the Pacific to Japan before Cirque established a foothold in Las Vegas, cementing a 10-year contract with Mirage Resorts to stage “Mystère” (now at home at Treasure Island). The show's packed performances were justification for a second production, “O” (think Cirque, but in water—eau, in French), now at Bellagio, followed by several other resident Vegas shows.
The company's international headquarters is in Montréal. Still run by Laliberté, it is very much self-contained. A staff of hundreds creates the outlandish costumes and elaborate make-up, music, lighting and props that are Cirque du Soleil trademarks. Scouts scour the world looking for entertainers and acrobats, and the chosen artists spend months training at the company's headquarters. Cirque's artists represent roughly 40 nationalities and converse in more than 25 languages.
Each new touring show has its première in Montréal, and the productions are as popular in Cirque's hometown as they are around the world.