More info on Cirque and Luminato

Thanks to reader Bob who tipped us off to this story in the Globe recently about the Cirque du Soleil event that will take over parts of Queens Quay in June.

The Globe picks it up

The latest creation from Cirque, which also marks the company's 25th anniversary, is a departure from the tightly controlled big-top and Las Vegas spectacles it's known for - representing a throwback of sorts to the company's street-performer roots, albeit one shaped by the massive creative resources Cirque now has at its disposal.

The Cirque show begins the evening of Friday, June 13, and stretches throughout the final weekend of Luminato. Two tribes of performers will start the weekend at two antithetical locations, one locale dressed up as a fantastical urban environment, the other decorated as a rural setting (at two of Toronto's main lakefront attractions: Harbourfront Centre, at the base of Simcoe Street; and the Music Garden, just west of the foot of Spadina Avenue). The tribes will each act out a series of street performances as they gradually converge along Queen's Quay for a final blowout show on Sunday evening.

But Cirque organizers are hesitant to offer more details about the storylines and concepts behind the show. The idea, says Yasmine Khalil, director of Cirque's events division, is not to offer the audience a chapter-by-chapter storyline, or to promise a series of distinct events, but rather to have them arrive and form their own impressions of what is unfolding before them. "If people come and try to understand too literally what is going on, it takes away from the magic and the enjoyment," Khalil says. Her advice: "Go and see what's going to happen that weekend with an open mind."