André Pérusse, manager, co-director and then head of the street arts program at the Just for Laughs Festival for 15 years, died of cancer on Saturday. He was 72 years old.
Posted at 7:19 p.m
Before André Pérusse dedicated 20 years of his life to the Just for Laughs Festival, he was a dancer and then a publicist at his Montreal PR firm specializing in the performing arts.
In the 1990s, such was her reputation in the cultural world that a certain René Angélil called upon her (along with Mia Dumont and Dick Walsh) to take care of the creative and formal aspects of his marriage to the singer. Celine Dion, in 1994.
Through his dance training, André Pérusse acquired a sense of rigor, discipline and perfection. His relatives called him “the best quality” because he was always well dressed. He embodied elegance personified and left nothing to chance. As an esthete, Pérusse shared the philosophy of Jean Cocteau in his vision of art and beauty.
“André was a visionary, a creator, one of the greatest event organizers in Montreal. André is a man of taste, a man of heart, a man of modernity and leaves memories full of humor and kindness for everyone who knew him,” wrote his family and his partner Raymond Beaunoyer in his obituary published on Sunday.
PHOTO ROBERT MAILLOUX, LA PRESSE ARCHIVE
André Pérusse with Luce Rozon in 2003 during a press conference to launch the outdoor program of the Just for Laughs Festival.