Turning Music into Motion

	Premiere: Jan.26.2006 Type: Touring / Arena Director: Michel Lemieux & Victor Pilon Arranger: Francis Collard Location No Longer Performed Closed Apr.19.2008

With visually stunning tableaux in which music and projections meld together seamlessly, DELIRIUM is a contemporary urban tale, a quest for balance in a world increasingly out of sync with reality. Bill – the main character – is an ordinary man living inside a bubble, more and more recluse in a society where even relationships are “virtual,” and where television and computers have become ubiquitous devices that isolate us from one another.

Everything in Bill’s urban life further draws him into an imaginary, virtual world. On his journey he meets myriad characters that bring him little by little on the cusp of growth and change. He eventually learns to ground his energy into the real world. At the end of his voyage, Bill contaminates the people of his planet and enlists them in his quest for balance.

DELIRIUM is a delirious sensory folly where music unites space, individual and society in a world marked by solitude and isolation. The subtext of DELIRIUM is the notion that, in life, we must join together—escape our solitary cocoons—to survive.

Injecting new life into the 21 songs chosen among Cirque du Soleil’s most memorable musical moments, DELIRIUM is based on a musical rather than an acrobatic structure—a first for Cirque du Soleil. Melodies, musicians and singers are the driving force of this show that features a series of tableaux made up of images ranging from prerecorded visuals to manipulated live feeds that create interactions between the artists and the audience. Featuring new texts in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, the 21 remixed melodies mark a significant departure from the music Cirque du Soleil fans have come to expect.

The music of DELIRIUM—“urban tribal beats” that combine percussive driven pop and electronic music with melodious ballads and world rhythm sounds—take the audience on an incandescent journey into the musical realm of Cirque du Soleil and the aerial world of Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon.