Cirque du Soleil Homage: The Folly and Refuge of Jean Leloup

Under the wide sky of Trois-Rivières, a procession will thread through a strange forest toward a luminous dome: 80 members of the public will walk beside acrobats, toucans will flash through an opening scene, and the last hour of a fictional king will play out in an immersive ring. The new Cirque du Soleil show Paradis perdus opens this summer at Amphithéâtre Cogeco and places the work of Jean Leloup at its center.

What will the Cirque du Soleil homage to Jean Leloup look like?

The production begins with the piece Le dôme, which onstage should feature toucans. From there the company will draw on a broad swath of Jean Leloup’s repertoire — including Paradis perdu, I Lost My Baby, Paradis City, L’oiseau-vitre and Les fourmis — to wrap 12 acrobatic tableaux in the songwriter-performer’s music. The scenography by Geneviève Lizotte and musical direction by Jean-Phi Goncalves are intended to create a “fantastical universe” that moves through the 11 albums named by the creative team.

Marie-Ève Milot, the show’s stage director, said she has a private bond with the artist’s music and that revisiting his work demanded care. She described the dôme as “an imaginary space, a theater made of light where the last hour of king Ponpon will be held, an immersive and inclusive space. ” Milot added that the forest atmosphere will be punctuated by the sounds of the woods and by onomatopoeic interjections drawn from the artist’s own divagations.

Who will be onstage — and who will join from the audience?

Paradis perdus is staged as the 10th installment in the company’s series of tributes presented each summer at the amphitheater. The cast will include 27 circus artists and, nightly, 80 spectators who will be integrated into the performance and lead a procession toward the dôme. Milot described those who join as “the lost, ” a mix of artists and members of the public who will walk toward what the production frames as a sought-after paradise.

While the series traditionally creates these homages without the celebrated artist’s participation, the creative trio still met with him for a free-flowing conversation in the studio of Jean-Phi Goncalves. Milot said she was struck by his presence and his capacity to remain in the moment, and she relayed a single, concrete request he made: he wanted a crow to appear onstage.

How will music and acrobatics capture the artist’s margin and moment?

Jean-Phi Goncalves has signed the musical reinterpretation, which the creative team describes as a free and instinctive approach built on the chosen songs. Daniel Ross, the director of creation, highlighted several acrobatic disciplines that will figure prominently: aerial silks, the perche, and a version of parkour urban. The production will also introduce new disciplines to the venue, with a revisited aerial hoop trio and a duo on the perche among them.

Milot said preserving the performative risk in the work was paramount — leaving room for improvisation and for a sense of being “in the moment” that she identifies as essential to the artist’s practice. She framed the piece as “an ode to everything that lives on the margins, ” a refuge for outsiders enacted through movement, music and communal presence.

Practically, the show will run across a summer season, staged at Amphithéâtre Cogeco over several weeks, and will place audience integration at its core for a roughly one hour and fifteen minute segment inside the dôme, where artists and spectators together will stage the final spectacle of king Ponpon.

Back at the edge of the amphitheater, as lights warm and the procession gathers, the creative team’s intention is visible in small gestures: a toucan in the opening scene, the inclusion of a crow at the artist’s request, and a dôme designed to be both theater and refuge. The production’s choice to fold audience members into the performance keeps risk, chance and immediacy central — qualities Marie-Ève Milot says are essential to the work of Jean Leloup.

Outside the dôme, the forest will breathe and the procession will move on, but inside that ring of light the night promises a tenderness toward the marginal and a daring toward the unexpected — a tribute gesture that, by design, leaves the final note unresolved and the question of paradise still to be found.