ABSTRACT
The idea of a Quebec-based entertainment corporation specialized in spectacular extravaganzas taking the city of kitsch by storm is already an extraordinary one in itself. The Cirque built its reputation on a dreamspace, an ‘imagination’, as Jennifer Harvie and Erin Hurley put it, where one can transcend traditional national parameters, where sexless bodies contort before the reader, and artists from across the world unite to tell the nonverbal tale of infinite human potential. The Cirque’s occasional gaudiness and usual excesses might point to an Americanization of its shows, yet one can’t help but notice the gradual imposition of a narrative-based, indeed almost a literary, sensibility in the Vegas productions. The passage from one pole to another is ensured by Zumanity and Love which are both European in reference while succumbing to an American pop aesthetic and fetishization of individuality. This chapter was originally presented as paper at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, McGill University, Montreal, February 2008.
