Q: For many years, you composed the music of Cirque du Soleil. One day, you decided to distance yourself from the Cirque. Did your decision come essentially from you or did you feel yourself pushed toward the outside?

René Dupéré: Not at all. While I was at the Cirque, I received numerous propositions I couldn’t respond to because of the size of my commitment. I simply didn’t have the time. I was really working full-steam, especially during the last three years. In 1992, I did Saltimbanco. From the middle of 1993 to the end of the year, we did Mystère. Back in Montreal in January of 1994, I had to produce Mystère’s CD and create the show Alegría for the month of April. And finally, I finished Alegría’s CD at the end of August.

After all that, I was exhausted; I needed some rest. Moreover, the Jazz Festival concert made me aware that I had to establish some distance to avoid competing with myself. I didn’t want to compose saying to myself, “This new show has to be even better than the last, Alegría.” I didn’t want to play that game. Alegría had worked so well that I wanted to stay on that success and distance myself for a while. As you said just now, it was not a departure, it was a distancing. I felt like accepting all those offers that had been made to me that I had never been able to accept. I’d lived in that environment for ten years. It’s enormous, in the creative environment. I know the foundations of the formula of the Cirque shows, I’ve analyzed them a lot. I feel that I could do ten other shows, which would probably be as beautiful, but as for me, I’d learn much less. And when I work, I always need to learn something.

Q: That sounds like what you were saying about your quitting teaching. In that case, you quit your job as a professor even though you still liked what you were doing, but you felt the need to do something else. Was this a bit the same?

René Dupéré: Yes. What I felt in quitting teaching was the fear that years later, I would be in the same place doing exactly the same thing. When I thought about distancing myself from the Cirque, some of my friends said, “Why leave right away? You could still make one or two shows...” I told myself that if I had had similar reasoning when I was in teaching, I would have never left! I would have thought instead about my retirement, about my pseudo-security. Actually, distancing myself from the Cirque didn’t require enormous courage. The royalties continued to come in, and I was being offered heaps of contracts... The material insecurity wasn’t very great. It wasn’t really about courage; it was a musical decision to take, a decision to simply do something else. I could have decided to completely stop making music. I actually thought about this possibility for several weeks, but I wasn’t capable of it.

Q: You felt exhausted, and yet you began to compose very quickly, but in a different way.

René Dupéré: I needed to do something, right away.

Q: And that was the Voyage album. You left to compose, in a completely different universe: the Iles-de-la-Madeleine. The islands, as the song about Napoleon says about Corsica, are like a boat in the middle of the ocean. Why this choice?

René Dupéré: First, it’s a very isolated place. The Iles-de-la-Madeleine are very lightly populated: fifteen thousand people on a stretch of around 100 kilometers! We were truly isolated, on a cul-de-sac...

I had just finished Alegría. I was ready to do something new. Élise, who had sung in the Mystère show in Las Vegas, was also ready to turn the page. When we returned to Quebec, we decided to produce a project together.

I personally felt that I had to start composing again quickly. Voyage was my way of turning the page. There are certain fundamental lines in that album that characterized my music in the Cirque: the evocative aspect of the music, the mixed percussion, coming from places all around the world, the eclectic side of the album. It was our CD. In Voyage, we allowed ourselves to explore. The next will be Élise’s album, and will highlight her voice in songs sung in Spanish. Her voice isn’t a “popular” voice, which could be heard a lot and then put aside after a short period. She can express many things and she transcends fashions. It’s her speciality. I would feel bad not to accomplish what we want to, under the pretext of bending ourselves to fashions, or for financial reasons, while we can find people who will help us carry out original projects. It would be crazy to not do it!

When I decided to distance myself from the Cirque, I had the same reasoning. I had all the means at my disposition. I was sure of myself psychologically, financially, artistically. Why wouldn’t I do it? So I did it.

Q: René Dupéré, I would like to talk about the evolution of your music. Some people might tend to see you simply through Cirque du Soleil, but you are retired from the Cirque. Besides, in parallel with your career in the Cirque, you made other music: for films, for film ads, for publicity. How has your music evolved with the years?

René Dupéré: I don’t know how to reply to that question. Has my music evolved? Sure, it’s gone elsewhere. I don’t believe any more in the word evolution than in the word career. I don’t know what a career is. I’ve never had a career as a teacher, nor as a composer. Everything has happened “by accident.” So it’s difficult to reply to a question on the evolution of my music. Rather, it’s gone in different directions. For example, the next CD that Élise and I are preparing is one of songs. I’ve taken this direction, but that doesn’t mean that I’m abandoning the cinema; it doesn’t exclude that maybe in five years, I could write the music for another Cirque show if the occasion ever presented itself.

Q: There is music that you write on commission, and there is also “free” music, like your Voyage CD. In one case, “Here’s what I’d like to say at this moment,” and in the other, “Here’s what someone else would like me to say.” Is this difficult?

René Dupéré: Not really. I really like commissions... when people know what they want. That’s one of the paradoxes of creation: the more people know what they want, the more I feel free. Basically, when people don’t know what they want, I feel like my feet are in shifting sand. I don’t know where to begin. That doesn’t interest me, because people are never satisfied. But when people send me a very precise order - as is the case for L’ombre de l’épervier -, I have a well-defined frame of reference, I know exactly where I’m starting. So I feel freer to create.

Q: Between Cirque du Soleil, advertising, cinema, television series... is the creative process different for each one? Does your sensibility have to be different?

René Dupéré: I believe in teams. With the Cirque, for example, we had an incredible creative team, a real family. Like families, there were, of course, highs and lows, disputes... At no moment was I bored. For the television series, it’s the same thing: I’m working with an extraordinary team, with fantastic people.

Each time I’m offered a contract, I try to see ahead of time whom I’d be working with. If the people aren’t interesting, I won’t work with them. It’s a sad thing to say, but today I can let myself say it. I’m going to negotiate a big contract that would mean nearly two years of work; I’m going to meet the people and see if I want to work with them. Two years of being bored and learning nothing, I can’t afford to let myself do that!

Q: And the Cirque? Do you really think you might come back one day?

René Dupéré: I don’t have any idea. I could probably say that it’s not likely, given the direction that I’ve taken recently. However, I operate on instinct. If one day, on the occasion of the Cirque’s 20th anniversary, for example, the director says to me, “René, we should do something together,” I might well accept! When I left, we weren’t on bad terms. I simply distanced myself bit by bit to produce other projects. Today I’m elsewhere. I’m no longer there.