Cirque du Soleil is a Canadian entertainment company and the largest contemporary circus producer in the world. Located in the inner-city area of Saint-Michel, Montreal, it was founded in Baie-Saint-Paul on 16 June 1984 by former street performers Guy Laliberté and Gilles Ste-Croix.
The culture of Quebec emerged over the last few hundred years, resulting predominantly from the shared history of the French-speaking North American majority in Quebec. Québécois culture, as a whole, constitutes all distinctive traits – spiritual, material, intellectual and affective – that characterize Québécois society. This term encompasses the arts, literature, institutions and traditions created by Québécois, as well as the collective beliefs, values and lifestyle of Québécois. It is a culture of the Western World.
Robert Lepage is a Canadian playwright, actor, film director, and stage director.
Franco Dragone was an Italian-born Belgian theatre director. He was the founder and artistic director of Dragone, a creative company specializing in the creation of large-scale theatre shows. He was also known for his work with Cirque du Soleil and Celine Dion.
Cirque Éloize is a contemporary circus company founded in Montreal in 1993 by Jeannot Painchaud, Daniel Cyr, Claudette Morin, and Julie Hamelin. Its productions combine circus arts with music, dance, technology, and theatre. "Éloize" means "heat lightning" in Acadian French, a dialect spoken in Acadia and the Magdalen Islands, where the group's founders are from.
Pierre Curzi is an actor, screenwriter and politician in Quebec. He is a former Member of the National Assembly of Quebec (MNA) for the riding of Borduas in the Montérégie region south of Montreal. Elected under the Parti Québécois (PQ) banner, he later sat as an independent.
Paule Baillargeon is a Canadian actress and film director. She won the Genie Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, and was a nominee for Best Director for The Sex of the Stars . Her film roles have included August 32nd on Earth , Jesus of Montreal , A Woman in Transit , Réjeanne Padovani and Days of Darkness .
Artcirq is an Inuit circus performance collective based in Igloolik, Nunavut, Canada. It was co-founded in 1998 by Guillaume Saladin and several circus artists from Montreal and youth from Igloolik, with the financial support of Igloolik Isuma Productions, Canada's first Inuit independent production company and Cirque Éloize. Its activities provide Inuit youth with a vehicle for creative expression that maintains strong links to Inuit traditions and performance styles.
Contemporary circus is a contested term in circus studies. In this article, it is used in contrast to the term 'traditional circus', combining with the genre elsewhere disambiguated as new circus or nouveau cirque. Many circus scholars prefer to separate these styles, as elaborated in circus. Contemporary circus, by this definition, is a genre of performing arts developed in the late 20th century in which a story, theme, mood or question is conveyed through traditional circus skills. For fans of animal performance in circus, this genre could arguably be found more akin to Variety as animals are rarely used, and traditional circus skills are blended with more choreographic, character-driven or mechanical approaches.
France Jodoin is a Canadian contemporary artist known for her maritime scenes. Painted in a semi-abstract style, her work is a modern interpretation of European Romanticism. Her work is found in Quebec museums, and in galleries in Canada, France and the United States.
Paul Vilar was a French author and writer of novels, tales and essays.
Charles Lafortune is a Canadian actor and radio and television host.
Pic du Taillon or Pico Taillón is a summit in the Pyrenees, culminating at 3,144 m (10,315 ft) on the Franco-Spanish border in the Monte Perdido Range.
Krzysztof Soroczyński is an artist, performer, trainer, and designer who works in the circus industry. Soroczyński has been involved in the circus arts for almost five decades. He has worked with many companies, including Cirque du Soleil and Cirque Éloize and has collaborated with many people, including directors Franco Dragone and Daniele Finzi Pasca.
René Morax was a Swiss writer, playwright, stage director and theatre manager. He founded the Théâtre du Jorat in Morges in 1908, and promoted historical and rural theatre in French in Switzerland. He is known for the play Le Roi David, with music by Arthur Honegger.
Claudine Chatel is a Québécoise actress who had mainly worked on television soap operas before she specialized in voice dubbing. She is the daughter of actor and screenwriter Marcel Cabay.
Brigitte Poupart is a Canadian actress and filmmaker. She is most noted for her performance in the film Ravenous and for directing the 2012 film Over My Dead Body.
Catherine Dorion is a Canadian politician from Quebec, who was elected to the National Assembly of Quebec in the 2018 provincial election. She represented the electoral district of Taschereau as a member of Québec solidaire (QS) from 2018 to 2022. Dorion is aligned with Option nationale, a pro-independence faction, referred internally as a "collective", within QS.
Gypsy Snider is a Canadian–American director, choreographer, and former acrobat. She co-founded The 7 Fingers, an artist collective, and choreographed Pippin in 2013.
Olivier Guimond was a Canadian actor and humorist. He is the father of voice actor Richard Darbois.
