#QUIDAM STRONG TOGETHER SERIES#

Quidam began its performing life on Apat the Cirque’s home base in Montreal, Canada. He explained, “We really do avoid telling a specific story because the public wouldn’t be able to dream it and then make their own interpretation.” The sense of disorientation is deliberate. “You’re never quite sure who is in whose dream,” Watson said. There are definite, consistent characters - a little girl, her father and mother - and there is a sense of place, although the audience is left to wonder if the child has created the world in her head or if it physically exists.

Although not scripted in the traditional sense, Quidam, of all the Cirque shows, has the most story. Part of the revelation of the theme lies in its story. “You’d see a whole group - he’d zoom in and suddenly, you’d see out of the group - that everyone down there has their own story,” he said. In pictures such as “The Kiss (Hotel Du Ville),” Doisneau managed to take a group photo, yet focus the viewer’s attention on a single person. To demonstrate, Watson stood and pointed out the window at people below. Other influences included the Belgian painter Rene Magritte (obvious in the show’s art work, depicting a headless man standing against a brick wall and carrying an umbrella) and the work of French photographer Robert Doisneau. There was Rwanda, Bosnia there were all these awful things happening…We’d hear about 100,000 refugees–this just becomes a figure to us…100,000 people is made up of 100,000 individuals all with their own past, future, and present, all different from everybody else,” he said. “What started us this time was the loss of individuality, the anonymity of people. A quidam, according to the show program, is “a nameless passer-by, a solitary figure lingering on a street corner, a person rushing past.”Īccording to Watson, Quidam grew out of what was going on around the world. The meaning here lies buried in the Latin word “quidam”. Is it theatre with circus or circus with theatre? Is it dance or is it a musical? No, I don’t ever want to put in a box…I think it’s funny to say that you can’t,” Cirque Du Soleil’s artistic director Andrew Watson explained, attempting to categorize his group’s new piece Quidam.įor this show, as for most Cirque shows, there is a governing theme. This month we continue on with 1997’s reviews of Quidam.ĬIRQUE DELVES INTO THE SECRET LIVES OF STRANGERS

#QUIDAM STRONG TOGETHER SERIES#

And I’m sharing these discoveries here in Fascination through a series of collections, beginning with the 1987 tournée of Le Cirque du Soleil (better known today as Le Cirque Réinventé), and continuing on from there. What I found was extraordinary, and more than I expected. It was time to peck through the archives. How did the press see Le Cirque du Soleil in 1998, 1994, 1990, 1987?

What I’d become interested in knowing was what some of the first reviews, peeks, and evaluations of these shows were as they took their first steps across North America. But the reviews we see today are too current, discussing these shows through a contemporary lens shows that have/had 15 to 20 years touring the globe, shows we would refer to as “classic” or “signature”. Sometimes the coverage is just a brief blurb about the show and its theme, occasionally there’s a short interview with a performer, a stage hand, or creation director, and other times it’s an assessment of the show itself, evaluating its technical and acrobatic merits with what had come through before. Think about it: as Cirque’s multitude of shows travel around the globe in either arenas or under the big top, at each stop, in each city, there is a write-up in the local press. How did others see Cirque du Soleil during this period? This is not a new revelation – far from it in fact – but this re-discovery struck a chord of curiosity within… Thereafter the speak becomes less joie de vivre and more lié aux affaires, and Cirque du Soleil turns from a rag-tag band of street performers into a bona fide corporate entity right before our very eyes. When did Cirque lose this dynamic sense of self, this liveliness, and vivacity about its past, present, and future? Unfortunately, not long after.

Something about its whimsical and heady nature spoke to the way Cirque du Soleil saw itself then, containing a youthful verve and arrogance that is simply no longer present. Not because the historia was in English, French, and Spanish, but rather I found the wording a bit more colorful… haughty… than what you’d find from the company today. A.C.T.A few months ago, as I was flipping through a few classic Cirque du Soleil programme books (as is my wont), I was happily caught off-guard by a brief history of the company that it had written about itself in Saltimbanco’s original European Tour programme, published sometime in 1996.

Quidam strong together