Cirque du Soleil - The Beatles LOVE

Guy Laliberté was born in Québec City in 1959. An accordionist, stilt-walker and fire-eater, he founded Québec’s first internationally-renowned circus with the support of a small group of accomplices. A bold visionary, Guy Laliberté recognized and cultivated the talents of the street performers from the Fête foraine de Baie-Saint-Paul and created Cirque du Soleil in 1984.

Guy Laliberté was the first to orchestrate the marriage of cultures and artistic and acrobatic disciplines that is the hallmark of Cirque du Soleil. Since 1984, he has guided the creative team through the creation of every show and contributed to elevating the circus arts to the level of the great artistic disciplines.

Cirque du Soleil has become an international organization, as much in terms of its makeup as in the scope of its activities and influence. Guy Laliberté now heads an organization with activities on five continents.

In October 2007, Guy Laliberté entered into a second lifetime commitment by creating the ONE DROP Foundation to fight poverty around the world by providing sustainable access to safe water.  This new dream stems from the knowledge that the right to water is key to the survival of individuals and communities all over the world and from the values which have been at the heart of Cirque du Soleil since its inception:  the belief that life gives back what you have given and even the smallest gesture will make a difference.

Awards and distinctions
Université Laval (Québec) awarded an honorary doctorate to Guy Laliberté in 2008. The year before, Guy Laliberté took the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for all three levels: Quebec, Canada and international. In 2004, he received the Order of Canada, the highest distinction in the country, from the Governor General of Canada.  The same year, he was recognized by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2003, he was honoured by the Condé Nast group as part of the Never Follow Program, a tribute to creators and innovators. In 2001, he was named a Great Montrealer by the Académie des Grands Montréalais. In 1997, Guy Laliberté received the Ordre National du Québec, the highest distinction awarded by the Government of Quebec.

A multitalented and prolific playwright, director and Artistic Director of his own theatre company, Dominic Champagne has been a forceful presence on the Quebec cultural scene since graduating from the National Theatre School of Canada in 1987.

In 1992, Champagne created waves among the public and his peers with his show Cabaret Neiges Noires, written in collaboration with his fellow artists at Théâtre il va sans dire. Inspired by Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, the play was highly innovative in both its message and its medium. The script was at once cynical, poetic, dark and funny, while the festive and unrestrained staging brought together acting, song and music. Champagne's gamble paid off: he succeeded in taking a critical look at the era and in bringing new audiences into the theatre. The show has been performed more than 100 times since it was first created.

Champagne adapted and directed Don Quichotte (Cervantes' Don Quixote) for a 1998 stage production that attracted record crowds to Montreal's Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, and in 2000 he set new attendance records with his staging of L'Odyssée (The Odyssey, by Homer). His other creations for the theatre include La Caverne, L'Asile, Lolita, La Cité Interdite and La Répétition.

He has also worked in television as a writer for the series Les Grands Procès, and was involved in the creation and direction of many variety shows including Le Plaisir Croît Avec l'Usage, the opening ceremonies of the Jeux de la Francophonie, Tous Unis Contre le SIDA, Les Spectacles de la Fête Nationale and La Soirée des Masques.

His more than 100 accomplishments for the stage, television and circus have earned him a host of awards and honors, including the Prix de la Critique for the text of La Répétition, two Gémeau awards for best direction for L'Odyssée and Don Quichotte, the Gémeau for best dramatic writing for Aurore and the Masque du Public for his adaptation of L'Odyssée.

Champagne's work in theatre and television led to an invitation from Cirque du Soleil to direct Varekai in 2002. Champagne's next assignment for Cirque was to co-direct ZUMANITY with René Richard Cyr. Writing and directing LOVE has been both rewarding and enormously challenging for Champagne. "It was a privilege and a great honor to be asked to do this," he says.

When Gilles Ste-Croix first told his parents he wanted to go into show business they said “Anything but that!” Ste-Croix grew up in rural Quebec, but he was determined not to stay there. He became a hippie and a nomad, living in communes and making the obligatory ‘60s pilgrimage to the West Coast where he lived in communes and audited some drama classes.

Ste-Croix did try to conform, even working in an architect’s office for a while, but he knew in his heart that he wasn’t cut out for a conventional business career. At the same time, his search for a vocation was not in any way aimless or vague. He says that from his teens he always had a strong drive to succeed and an equally strong desire to entertain. However his entrée into show business came about in a most unusual and unpredictable way.

In the late 1970s Gilles Ste-Croix was living in a commune in Victoriaville, Quebec, picking apples to make money. One day he mused that the job would be a whole lot easier if he could attach the ladder to his legs—and devised his first set of stilts.

A friend happened to mention the Bread and Puppet Theater in nearby Vermont, which used stilt-walking as the basis of many of its performances. Ste-Croix went to see the company and realized that his apple-picking skills might actually be in demand in the wider world of entertainment.

In 1980, Gilles Ste-Croix and a band of street artists founded the Échassiers de Baie-Saint-Paul and organized a street performance festival called the Fête foraine de Baie-Saint-Paul, which would eventually lead to the founding of Cirque du Soleil with Guy Laliberté in 1984.

In 1984 and 1985, Gilles Ste-Croix designed and performed many stilt acts for Cirque du Soleil. In 1988, he became Cirque's Artistic Director, as well as coordinating a talent search that extended to the four corners of the globe.  He was Director of Creation for all of Cirque du Soleil's productions from 1990 to 2000: Nouvelle Expérience, Saltimbanco, Alegría, Mystère, Quidam, La Nouba, "O", and Dralion.  In 1992, he directed Fascination, the first Cirque du Soleil show presented in arenas in Japan. He also directed the groundbreaking 1997 dinner/cabaret show Pomp Duck and Circumstance in Germany.

In 2000, while continuing to act as a consultant for Cirque du Soleil, Gilles Ste-Croix decided to realize one of his greatest dreams: Driven by his passionate interest in horses, he founded his own company to produce the 2003 show Cheval-Théâtre, which featured 30 horses and as many artist-acrobats under canvas and toured ten cities in North America.

Since December 2002, Gilles St-Croix returned to Cirque du Soleil as Vice-President of Creation, New Project Development. In July 2006 he was nominated Senior Vice-President of Creative Content.

Chantal Tremblay is hardly a newcomer to Cirque du Soleil. At the end of the 1980s, while living in New York developing a career in dance, she was drawn to a performance of the touring Cirque production We Reinvent the Circus. “I was blown away,” she says. She decided on the spot to join the company and has been with Cirque ever since.

Tremblay started out as a dancer on a Cirque project, then became choreographer Debra Brown’s assistant in the creation of Mystère. Her next position was as Artistic Coordinator of Alegría, and two years later, in 1995, she was appointed the show’s Artistic Director. During this effervescent period she undertook numerous other challenges, most notably participating in the first Cirque du Soleil feature film Alegría, directed by Franco Dragone, the television series Solstrom, and televised versions of various Cirque shows.

Building on these early achievements, Chantal went on to become the Artistic Director of La Nouba and Mystère. In 2001, she assisted the director in the creation of a highly-acclaimed Cirque du Soleil number featured in the telecast of the Academy Awards and was appointed Creation Director of the 2006 show LOVE.

As Creation Director of OVO, Chantal is the pivotal link between the Producer and the team of Creators, overseeing the day-to-day process of creation and making sure that the Creators have all the tools they need to deliver the show. This assignment, which is both technical and creative, calls for a total understanding of the project and a detailed familiarity with the Cirque du Soleil modus operandi.

Bringing a wealth of rich and diversified knowledge to the undertaking, Chantal Tremblay is in a unique position to combine her experience as an Artistic Director, her great sensitivity with her organizational skills to manage the demands of the operation with a master’s touch. Her solid credentials make her a key organizational and creative member of the team.

LOVE is the second Cirque du Soleil show (after Corteo) for which Oscar nominee and César winner Jean Rabasse has designed the sets.

Jean Rabasse has worked extensively in dance, theatre and cinema as a set designer and decorator. He has been the resident designer for Philippe Découflé's dance company DCA for more than ten years.

Rabasse was nominated for an Academy Award and won the César for his sumptuous, elaborate designs for the 2001 film Vatel. His other film credits include Astérix, directed by Claude Zidi, The Dreamers, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, La Cité des Enfants Perdus and Delicatessen directed by Caro and Jeunet, and Norman Jewison's The Statement.

"I don't make a distinction between the various disciplines I work in," he says. "I bring theatrical, mechanical effects to cinema and cinematic techniques to the stage. I like to mix things up. My signature is to pay very close attention to the details, the colors, the surfaces, the textures. To be very meticulous about these things, and to never repeat myself."

For LOVE the set design began with the interior design of the theatre itself. Rabasse gutted the existing classical proscenium layout and placed the action in the center with the seats in a 360-degree configuration. His objective was to immerse the audience in the intimacy of the experience by putting them as close to the performers as possible in a sense, recreating the atmosphere and sensations of the big top, within a permanent structure.

The concept behind both the theatre and the set is to move the audience. "This show is an evocation of the Beatles," says Jean Rabasse. "I set myself the goal of giving the audience the opportunity to connect with it at a childlike emotional level through simple stage techniques and transcendent music."

Jean Rabasse was born in Tlemcen, Algeria in 1961.

Philippe Guillotel began designing and making costumes when he was just eight. As soon as he was old enough, he studied cutting and couture at various schools in Paris. After a decade in the world of fashion, he discovered dance, and through it, his true calling—costume allied to movement.

Since 1985, Guillotel has worked for a succession of dance and theatre companies. He has had a long working relationship with the renowned French choreographer Philippe Découfléfor whom he designed the astonishing costumes seen in the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. He has also worked with Découflé on productions for the Paris Opera, the influential Opéra de Lyon and the opening ceremonies of the 50 th Cannes film festival.

Philippe Guillotel has also worked in cinema. He designed the highly-acclaimed costumes for the 2002 feature Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, and prior to that, Doggy Bag and À la Mode.

For LOVE Guillotel set himself the tough challenge of evoking a sense of time and place to fit the various eras of the Beatles’ career as a group—but without simply reproducing the fashions of the era. He says that would have been the easy way to go, but it would have been far less suited to the intentions of the show.

“Cirque du Soleil has the biggest costume workshop in the world,” he points out. “The scope of the facilities here lets the creators go quite a bit further than they usually can. I wanted to pay tribute to the creativity of the Beatles with my designs and to accomplish that, I’ve tried to be as creative as they were.”

Philippe Guillotel was born in Paris in 1955.

Jonathan Deans, one of the most sought-after sound designers in the musical theatre world, is the man behind the sound environments of OVO. Having created the soundscapes of Saltimbanco, Mystère, “O”, La Nouba, ZUMANITY, KÀ, Corteo, LOVE, KOOZA, Wintuk and, most recently, CRISS ANGEL Believe. Jonathan finds Cirque’s work-in-progress and team-oriented creative approach highly stimulating.

Jonathan was fascinated by electronics at an early age. At 15, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company as an actor where his keen interest in sound began to blend with a theatrical context. Several years later, after a spell as a sound engineer in the music industry, notably at Morgan Studios where he brushed shoulders with artists such as Cat Stevens, Paul Simon and Rick Wakeman, he made his way back to the theatre via the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and later went on to mix the sound for the musical A Chorus Line. One success soon followed another and he became the sound mixing engineer for over a dozen productions including Evita, Cats, Bugsy Malone and The Sound of Music.

Jonathan’s success as a mixing sound engineer led to him being hired as sound designer on the musical Marilyn. This was followed by work on other West End shows including Time, Les Misérables, Mutiny, Jean Seberg and then on Broadway, Ragtime, Fosse, King David, Damn Yankees, Taboo, Brooklyn, Lestat, Pirate Queen and Young Frankenstein.

For Jonathan Deans, Cirque’s permanent theatres and its big top are two quite different worlds when it comes to sound design. “There are different technical demands, but as far as the texture and the layering of the music and sound are concerned, it’s the same,” he says. “My work is to create a unique environment for every production. And whatever the environment is, I need to make sure that sonically the audience members know they are entering a different world.”

Lighting Designer Yves Aucoin has racked up an unparalleled list of credits working with musicians and singers. He has worked with Celine Dion on all her shows since 1989.

He has also created the lighting for the singers Roch Voisine, Garou and Julio Iglesias, and worked as a lighting consultant for Elton John, Gloria Estefan and Le Rêve.

In musical theatre, Aucoin has worked his own magic on Grease, Romeo and Juliet, Elvis Story, La Cage aux Folles, and has also worked with the stage magic of Alain Choquette. He has lit the gala shows of the Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal and designed André-Philippe Gagnon's lighting for his one-man shows in Las Vegas .

Aucoin has also worked extensively in television on broadcasts that include Garou – Portrait of a Singer, Cent Ans en Chantant, the ADISQ Awards Gala and the Governor General of Canada's Awards Annual Gala. Along the way, Aucoin has received many awards for his work, including the Félix (the Canadian equivalent of the Grammy). Branching out into other entertainment arenas, Aucoin has lit skaters in Holiday on Ice and the musicians of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra when they played the Molson Centre in 2000.

LOVE is the first Cirque du Soleil production Aucoin has worked on. "The show is full of challenges," he says. "The biggest is the fact that it's in the round. A 360-degree stage means that one person's front light is another person's back light, and that all has to be worked out to the high, high standards Cirque has established with all its previous shows. But along with the challenges comes the opportunity for me to do my best work."

Yves Aucoin was born in 1964 in the Magdalen Islands, Quebec.

Video Projections Designer Francis Laporte belongs to the new generation of creators who integrate digital video production and projection technology with more traditional live show forms. Since finishing university in 1992, he has worked on some 20 projects integrating video with the performing arts and theatre. One of his landmark professional assignments was the video design for a stage adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey directed by Dominic Champagne. He also does performances and installations, both alone and with other artists.

As a projections designer, Francis Laporte can make good use of his diverse training. After studying communications and drama in college, he entered the theatre program at the Université du Québec, specializing in directing and stage design. His interest in images led him to video and multimedia production. “In drama, I looked at shows from the director’s point of view, whereas in video my approach was more theatrical. As a video designer for live shows, I’m finally working on bringing these media together,” he says.

Francis Laporte also creates images for prestigious television broadcasts, such as the opening ceremonies of the Jeux de la Francophonie and the awards ceremony La Soirée des Jutra. In 2003-2004 he developed the visual concept for Eros Ramazzotti’s show (directed by Serge Denoncourt) and created the set design and visual concept for a performance of the Fantastic Symphony by Berlioz at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. He has also taken on the stage design for live concerts, including Quebec singer-cellist Jorane and singer-songwriter Stefie Shock.

In 1999, Francis Laporte created the multimedia overture for Dralion. But Varekai was the first Cirque du Soleil show to fully incorporate this new artistic language. He further extended his approach in LOVE, Wintuk and now in CRISS ANGEL Believe. “At Cirque du Soleil, we have the great good fortune of working in a context where everything isn’t seen in terms of constraints; instead there’s a shared determination to see how far we can push the limits,” he notes.

"Visually, my role is to give the dimension of perspective and depth to the world of CRISS ANGEL Believe," says Francis Laporte. “The projections help to give the various environments a ‘Gothic/Victorian' flavor by blending the mysterious with the grandiose, the bizarre and the sublime. The core intention of the projections is to play with the perceptions, creating a kind of playful dialogue between the real and the virtual."

Choreographer and self-described enfant terrible Dave St-Pierre has been dubbed an enfant terrible by many dance critics, but he is reluctant to accept the label himself . “ It’s weird ,” he says. “B ecause it was a Fred Astaire movie I saw when I was five years old that began my life long love affair with dance .” saw a Fred Astaire movie on television when he was only five years old, and that was enough to spark a lifelong interest in dance.

He has accumulated an impressive résumé as a dancer, notably with Brouhaha Danse, staying with the company for more than six years.

Following that , he danced for many Quebec choreographers including Harold Rhéaume, Daniel Léveillé, Jean-Pierre Perrault, Estelle Clareton, Pierre-Paul Savoie and Alain Francoeur throughout Canada, the United States and Europe. He was featured in many other shows, such as Amour, Acide et Noix and La Pudeur des Icebergs by Daniel Léveillé, as well as the musical Notre-Dame de Paris.

As a choreographer, St-Pierre is best known for his groundbreaking 2004 creation La Pornographie des Âmes, which he performed five times in Montreal with his dance company before more than 2,000 people (an unprecedented feat in contemporary dance) . A nd during the same season they also performed the work in Munich, Berlin, Salzburg, Wolfsburg and Amsterdam has played all over the world to ra ve reviews. The piece won the 2004 prize for best show in Frankfurt and St-Pierre was named Personality of the Year, 2004-5 by Radio-Canada, the Quebec media outlets Mirror , The Gazette , ICI , La Presse and Le Devoir as well as the German magazine BALLETANZ .

Dave St-Pierre’s work has been featured in several Montreal stage productions, including works directed by Claude Poissant at Espace Go in 2005. Brigitte Poupart approached him to work on her show Cérémonials and the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde engaged his services as Movement Director for its production of La Tempête, directed by Victor Pilon and Michel Lemieux. He also appeared in two productions for Cinéquanon Film, including the film l’Enfant de la Musique in which he played the lead character, Mozart.

LOVE marks the third time Dave has worked for Cirque du Soleil. His first sortie was with ZUMANITY , which is playing at New York-New York Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. In 2004 St- Pierre created the choreography for the Cirque mega-show Soleil de Minuit (Midnight Sun) which closed the Montreal International Jazz Festival in front of a crowd n audience of more than 200,000. On For LOVE Dave St-Pierre worked extremely closely with the dancers. “They are the catalyst for a heteroclite and sin gular form of dance,” he says. “Each brings his or her own energy and style to the show . I give them the power to create , so the dance will be truly in their own image, an image that reflects their oneness , their character and their life. My job is to bring out t he best in each of them, to see them in all their strength and their vulnerability. ”

is sharing choreography duties with Hansel Cereza.. “I cast almost all the dancers myself,” he says. “My objective is to tap into their youth and energy in a completely contemporary context and idiom, rather than to attempt to recreate the style of the sixties.”

Dave St-Pierre was born in 1974 in St. Jérôme, Quebec.

The Spanish actor, choreographer and artistic director Hansel Cereza has traveled the world to bring his unique vision to theatre and dance productions large and small.

He co-founded the renowned theatre company La Fura dels Baus as a performer and creator. He also worked in special events including a show called “Mediterranean” which he created for the opening ceremonies of the 1992 Olympics in his native Barcelona.

Cereza left La Fura dels Baus in 1995 and has been working independently since 1996 putting on “Macro Shows” on a similar grand scale for major corporate clients.

Equally at home in the world of dance, with many choreography credits to his name, Cereza created a flamenco performance to launch the film Muerte en Granada, and directed a production of Vicente Amigo’s “Poet” for the Spanish National Ballet.

On LOVE Cereza is sharing choreography duties with Dave St-Pierre. He says he approached the challenge of creating choreographies for acrobats and other non-dancers by really getting to know the artists, finding out who they were, learning their fears, discovering what they were capable of and working very closely with them to tailor their movements to take advantage of their strength and physicality.

Hansel Cereza was born in Barcelona in 1957.

Guy St-Amour has been involved in the performing arts for more than 30 years. He began his career in 1975 as a technician and has participated in an impressive number of projects in theatre, cinema, television and circus. In 2002, he was selected to contribute his talents to the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Royal Visit to Canada. And in 2005 he worked on the Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan’s Centennial Celebration of the Arts.

St-Amour has been associated with Cirque du Soleil since the very beginning, working in a number of pioneering technical direction capacities between 1984 and 1995. He participated in the creation of rigging systems for aerial numbers, special effects, acrobatic equipment and set design elements. He has also been interested in audio since 1984, and created the sound design for Nouvelle Expérience in 1989. He also designed, created and supervised the installation of the big tops for Cirque’s European and North American tours between 1989 and 1995.

In 1987 he founded his own consulting company which has worked for scores of clients including Expo ‘98 in Portugal (for which he created a teleport simulator), the Montreal Casino, the National Film Board of Canada, the Just For Laughs comedy festival, Opéra de Montréal’s Carmen Sous les Étoiles and the Montreal International Jazz Festival. At the same time he is intensely involved in training the next generation of technicians in Quebec, teaching at the National Theatre School, the École Nationale de Cirque and the Montreal-based circus arts national network En Piste.

LOVE marks St-Amour’s return to Cirque du Soleil and the first time he has worked on a Cirque production as a Creator. He points out that the creative approach to the show is unusual because the acrobatic equipment and the set designs form a single element. “It imposes a rigorous approach,” he says. “Every detail is important, and it’s complicated by the complex timing of the show. A huge number of events have to happen precisely on cue throughout the performance. This calls for a collective effort. We are aiming for the highest technical and aesthetic refinement in the acrobatic equipment while maximizing the performance, comfort and safety of the artists.”

Guy St-Amour was born in Montreal in 1959.

LOVE’s Acrobatics Performance Designer Daniel Cola has been with Cirque du Soleil since 1993, when the company went looking for trampolinists to join the cast of Mystère, its first resident show in Las Vegas.

Daniel Cola knew all along that his career path would involve his first loves: acrobatics and performance. He was a member of the French national trampoline team from 1978 to 1984, and World Champion in 1982. With an eye to the future, he also studied coaching before moving from the world of sport to the world of performance.

Daniel Cola left Mystère to take a more theatrical and less acrobatic role in Alegría, and toured Europe and Asia with that show for two years. In 1998 he created a trampoline act and became a coach for the Cirque production La Nouba at Walt Disney World in Florida. He stayed with the show as the Artistic Coordinator until 2004.

“I first became a fan of the Beatles as a kid of 14 in France. They were very present in my life,” says Daniel Cola. “I see LOVE as an opportunity to capture their spirit of youthfulness not only through acrobatics but also through the medium of extreme sports.”

Daniel Cola was born in 1962 in Asnières, France.

Makeup Designer Nathalie Gagné has been fascinated by makeup and its influence on the actor’s craft since her teens. She studied theatre production at Cégep de Saint-Hyacinthe, a community college in Quebec, then went on to become one of the first graduates of the Montreal subsidiary of the famed Paris-based makeup school École Christian Chauveau.

Before joining Cirque du Soleil, Gagné worked in theatre, film and television. She was twice nominated for a Gémeau award for best makeup, all categories combined. The honor is conferred by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television.

“Makeup is a reflection of the character’s soul. It’s also a magic wand that sweeps away inhibitions,” says Gagné, who since 1995 has crafted more than 200 separate makeup designs for Cirque. Her final concepts were culled from over 2,000 sketches.

Since Cirque performers have to apply their own makeup, Nathalie Gagné involves them in the actual creation of their onstage look. “Unlike actors, acrobats aren’t used to studying their own faces,” she says. “One of my goals is to get them to do just that, and help them find within themselves what I call ‘lines of force’ that will serve to build their characters.”

Nathalie Gagné is also responsible for ensuring the integrity of all makeup designs that bear her signature. Since the performers apply their own makeup, workshops in makeup techniques are now part of the general training provided to Cirque du Soleil artists. Gagné first teaches performers how to do their own makeup, and then writes a step-by-step application guide for each of them.

Nathalie introduced new makeup concepts to the shows Mystère, Alegría and Saltimbanco, which led her to work with director Franco Dragone and costume designer Dominique Lemieux. Following her work on Quidam, “O”, La Nouba, Varekai, Zumanity, KÀ, Corteo, Delirium, LOVE, ZAIA and CRISS ANGEL Believe™ is Nathalie Gagné’s eleventh contribution to the creation of a Cirque du Soleil show.

"To establish the rich, ripe characters in CRISS ANGEL Believe™, we worked the way we do in film, – designers and artists building together – to invent each of the personalities,” says Nathalie. By using costumes and projections as components of the makeup, we are looking to create a crazy but perfectly credible universe. We wanted to turn the improbable into the plausible. "

Nathalie Gagné was born in 1963 in Trois-Pistoles, in the Lower St. Lawrence region of Quebec.

Patricia Ruel, Wintuk’s Set Designer, Props Designer and designer of the visual aspects of the show’s puppets, has worked on countless theatre productions, television shows, awards ceremonies, festivals and special events. In 1998, she graduated in Set Design from Collège Lionel-Groulx in Quebec. Since then she has worked on more than 50 productions as a props designer and a dozen or more as set designer.

Patricia has received two Théâtre Denise-Pelletier prizes, for her sets for Révizor directed by Reynald Robinson in 2003 and Edmond Dantes directed by Robert Bellefeuille in 2004. That same year, she designed the props for the Cirque du Soleil show KÀ, directed by Robert Lepage, with whom she subsequently worked on the operas 1984, presented in London in 2005, and The Rake’s Progress, produced in Brussels in 2007.

Her next Cirque du Soleil engagement was as props designer for Reflections in Blue, a show presented as part of the opening ceremonies of the FINA World Aquatic Championships in 2005, and she followed that as the props designer for the Las Vegas production of LOVE directed by Dominic Champagne in 2006 and the 2007 XLI Super Bowl pre-game show.

Wintuk marks the fifth time Patricia has worked on a Cirque production, and is her first as Set Designer. It is also the 10th time she has worked with Wintuk’s director of creation Fernand Rainville, notably on his productions Août, un repas à la campagne by Jean-Marc Dalpé et Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet, for which she designed the sets.

For Patricia Wintuk is a new challenge. “Winter and snowstorms are very familiar to anyone from Quebec,” she says. “But I've never had the opportunity to work with them in the theatre before. The brilliance of ice and the appeal of its luminosity have given me a whole new atmospheric and visual vocabulary to explore. One of the challenges I faced is the inescapable fact that snow is white – and that was quite a challenge for the lighting and the projection designs too. The theme of winter gave rise to new concepts and encouraged me to explore new materials and textures.”

Patricia Ruel was born in 1977 in Ste-Thérèse, Quebec.

Puppet Designer Michael Curry is one of the world's leading production designers. He works widely in both conceptual and technical development with the foremost entertainment companies such as the Metropolitan Opera, London's Royal National Theatre, Disney Theatrical Productions, LA Opera, and Universal Pictures.

Michael has been the recipient of many prestigious awards from his peers, including several awards for his puppet and costume work on Broadway, Olympic ceremonies, and his continuing innovations in the fields of visual effects and puppetry design. He owns and operates Michael Curry Design Inc, which designs and creates live-performance oriented tri-dimensional characters and productions, such as those seen by world-wide audiences in the 1996 and 2002 Olympics opening and closing ceremonies, Super Bowl 2000, and New York City's epoch 2000 millennium event.

He has collaborated with Julie Taymor on many stage and opera productions. Among his numerous awards, he received the 1998 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Puppet Design in recognition of his work for Taymor on The Lion King.

Michael first worked with Cirque du Soleil on KÀ, written and directed by Robert Lepage and says about his experience :"I've really enjoyed the process by which they allow the artists to get everything they want to get out of their particular discipline," he says. "They are completely patient and gracious about their support for the arts." He also collaborated on LOVE, for which he designed a succession of large-scale "puppets" that resonate with key events in the Beatles' lives or represent characters in their songs.

Since then Michael has worked on an opera at the Paris Opera directed by Robert Lepage, an opera at La Scala, Milan, directed by William Friedkin, and a Broadway production of Spider Man with music by Bono and Edge, directed by Julie Taymor.

“In Wintuk, the body puppets, representing the perfect fusion of form and function, were designed to help the acrobats truly feel the animals they embody,” explains the puppet designer.

Michael Curry was born in 1958 in Oregon.