A KURIOS ANNIVERSARY

TALK ABOUT A BIG TOP BAPTISM BY FIRE. Longtime Cirque du Soleil designer Michel Laprise makes his writing and directorial debut with Kurios – a collision of technology and imagination set in the 19th century. But Kurios isn’t just Laprise’s first show – it’s also the centrepiece of the Canadian company’s 30th anniversary year. In other words … no pressure. “We pushed the envelope for this show [because] it’s [in] a chapiteau (tent),” Laprise says. “I put on the table four things that [are] impossible to do in a chapiteau, and we have to make it happen. There was pressure but also a great excitement.”

Laprise aimed to revisit the “craziness” of Cirque’s roots as a band of roving street performers who “had to do something very unusual to capture people’s attention … it had to be transformative for yourself and the audience and it had to be fun so at the end they would put some money in your hat.”

The result, Kurios, combines the awe-inspiring Cirque showmanship with the spirit of an era “where people were convinced that everything was possible because everything was possible.”

The show thrills until July 13 in Montreal, before heading to Quebec City (July 24-Aug. 17) and Toronto (Aug. 28-Oct. 5, www.cirquedusoleil.com).

And as for Laprise – is Cirque’s newest ringmaster ready for the spotlight?

“In our house, people walk on tight wires, they do extraordinary things and they take risks … and if (we) are not ready to work as hard as we are and to surpass ourselves, then we should leave the building.”

Sounds like he’s good to go. —Mike Crisolago

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer” — F. Scott Fitzgerald