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Members of travelling circuses would say that society sees them as a pariah group banished to the edges of town; a freak show to quickly move on after the last performance is done; rabble-rousers living in caravans, who don’t bother to wash.

So how’s this for some postmodern marketing. Let’s buy a piece of land on the outskirts of town – a rubbish dump in fact. Let’s get some cutting-edge architects and some government subsidies, and let’s build an empire. And, at the same time, let’s get rid of the stink.

It sounds like the kind of impossible feat that circuses are famous for, like superhuman strength or heads-in-tigers’-jaws. They have pulled this one off too, in the dynamic French-Canadian city of Montréal.

Ten years ago, pioneering Cirque du Soleil chose the poor immigrant district of Montréal’s St Michel to build its 15-million pound training studios. They needed to build big, and price of land was a fraction of that downtown. The fact it was on North America’s second biggest landfill just added to the allure. ‘People didn’t know if it was visionary or crazy,’ says Gaétan Morency, Cirque du Soleil’s VP of Public Affairs. ‘At the time, St Michel was the dump of Montréal. Now, it’s a Silicon Valley of circus arts.’

Since Cirque du Soleil anchored itself to its home turf, Montréal has also become base to the visionary Cirque Éloise and numerous troupes involved in street performance, jazz, dance and comedy. Canada’s National Circus School chose to relocate to this same toxic site for their expanded offices, too. With all this potential employment in one place, Montréal has fast become the destination of choice for anyone wanting to run off and join the circus.

But for the residential neighbourhood of St Michel, the world’s circus capital was just big glassy buildings behind high walls. The mostly Haitian and Asian immigrant community who lived in subsidized housing around the perimeter of the rubbish dump would never have the chance to see a Cirque du Soleil show.

Tourists also would have been sorely disappointed if they had come to Montréal looking for a big top. The city may be the training ground for circus artists – who learn to juggle, eat fire and defy gravity here – but actual performances have been thin on the ground. Shows have become so extravagant that putting on a spectacle for a relatively small market like Montréal just wouldn’t pay. But like all true-grit artists, these performers have not forgotten their roots, and the circus is coming back to town.

Now there is a new organisation called TOHU for tourists and city-dwellers alike, who want to see some of the action Montréal is famous for breeding. TOHU is not only an incubator for new productions but also hosts several performance spaces, including the Chapiteau des Arts, a 1700-seat big top hosting some of the world’s most extraordinary acrobats and creative choreographers. Shows cost a fraction of the price of Cirque du Soleil’s sell-out shows, and for local residents, they are often free.

The origin of the name TOHU is a Hebrew phrase describing the chaotic initial state of the universe. St Michel would be a good setting. The district makes the papers every day for the wrong reason: gangland violence, armed theft, drug trafficking. Rubbish is still dumped here daily, and that contract has many more years to run.

But with the backing of Cirque du Soleil and others, the future looks greener. Their out-of-the-box thinking and big bucks are brainstorming creative ways to transform a festering trash site the size of three football fields. New buildings use recycled materials and incorporate innovative heating systems. A neighbouring plant collects methane gas released from the rotting rubbish and converts it into electricity. The orchards and vegetable gardens supply the canteen. Over the next 15 years, St Michel will be further transformed with 200 acres of parkland and five kilometres of scenic cycleways.

It’s the sort of grand projet they can carry off in bilingual, multicultural Montréal. The French-Canadian city cleverly blends that arcane European humour with North American bigger-is-better ambition. It is that kind of intellectual environment that helps give rise to shows like Cirque du Soleil’s Quidam, whose symbol was a headless man representing modern isolation, inspired by René Magritte. Hardly stuff for kids. But then throw in some excruciating contortionist positions to make the crowd ‘Ooh!’ and ‘Aah!’, and you might just have created the Greatest Show on Earth. St Michel has a lot to look forward to.

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