"Our approach was very simple. It was about creating a universal language. A show that will be attractive toward every people coming from all over the world. And that was a big thing"
About this Quote
“Very simple” is doing a lot of PR labor here. Guy Laliberte frames a massively engineered entertainment product as if it were an instinct: just build a “universal language,” and the world will show up. That rhetorical move is central to Cirque du Soleil’s origin myth (and to Laliberte’s brand of entrepreneurship): downplay the machinery, spotlight the magic.
The intent is twofold. First, it’s a pitch for scale. “Every people coming from all over the world” isn’t poetic; it’s market logic dressed as humanism. If you can make spectacle legible without translation, you can sell it anywhere - Las Vegas, Macau, Dubai - and never worry about subtitles, political references, or the shelf life of local jokes. Second, it’s a defense against cultural gatekeeping. Cirque didn’t need to compete with Broadway dialogue or national theater traditions because it built a hybrid grammar: acrobatics, music, costume, light, rhythm. The “language” is the body, and bodies travel well.
The subtext is that universality is curated, not discovered. What looks like a borderless art form is also a careful smoothing of edges: fewer words means fewer ways to offend, fewer specific claims, fewer commitments. The “big thing” isn’t just artistic ambition; it’s the commercial breakthrough of a product that can be franchised globally while still feeling intimate, even “human.” Laliberte’s simplicity is the kind that only works after you’ve done the hard part: engineering wonder into a repeatable system.
The intent is twofold. First, it’s a pitch for scale. “Every people coming from all over the world” isn’t poetic; it’s market logic dressed as humanism. If you can make spectacle legible without translation, you can sell it anywhere - Las Vegas, Macau, Dubai - and never worry about subtitles, political references, or the shelf life of local jokes. Second, it’s a defense against cultural gatekeeping. Cirque didn’t need to compete with Broadway dialogue or national theater traditions because it built a hybrid grammar: acrobatics, music, costume, light, rhythm. The “language” is the body, and bodies travel well.
The subtext is that universality is curated, not discovered. What looks like a borderless art form is also a careful smoothing of edges: fewer words means fewer ways to offend, fewer specific claims, fewer commitments. The “big thing” isn’t just artistic ambition; it’s the commercial breakthrough of a product that can be franchised globally while still feeling intimate, even “human.” Laliberte’s simplicity is the kind that only works after you’ve done the hard part: engineering wonder into a repeatable system.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|
More Quotes by Guy
Add to List
