Luminato’s last breath for 2009 came baited with some of the festival’s premier offerings.

The nine-day festival - which brought theatre, dance, music and public installations into public spaces - culminated on Queens Quay with one final performance from Cirque du Soleil.

A week of successful events solidified the worth of Luminato, but this final push on the lakeshore should silence any naysayers. The area was teeming with bodies. People lined up for everything from washrooms to water to the highly successful 1000 Tastes of Toronto, an event sponsored by President’s Choice that invited various local eateries to bring elements of their menu out to the streets.

Patrons sampled everything from tandoori chicken, to fresh-shucked oysters, to wild boar - all prepared by some of Toronto’s most prominent chefs.

As the public dined on this ultra-refined street food, there was plenty of opportunity for entertainment as well. Cirque du Soleil accepted responsibility for keeping the masses amused. During the day drummers perched waterside, drilling tribal rhythms into the skins of their djembes. Every half hour the acrobatics team would treat the willing public to a quick routine involving all sorts of flips, cartwheels and gravity-defying aerials.

This was merely a teaser, though, for the final event. Wrapping up Luminato 2009 was one final performance by Cirque du Soleil. The free show was a theatrical odyssey somewhere between J.R.R. Tolkien and Ziggy Stardust. The show began with a musical interlude pairing drums and a didgeridoo, setting the tone for what was to come.

One part fantastical woodland nymph, one part glam-rock superstar, the vague storyline that formed the backbone to the performance echoed the sometimes-strained relationship between nature and technology.

However, this loose focus merely provided the platform, or rather the excuse, to show off the sometimes-unbelievable feats achievable by the human body. With multitudes of gymnastics, stilt walking and high flying acrobatics the show kept the capacity crowd enthralled.

The piece used highbrow theatrics along with intense costumes and music that sounded like the love child between Enya and Trent Reznor.

It was the perfect end to a strong nine days that no doubt whetted the collective appetite of the masses and left them looking forward to the summer full of wonderful free festivals to come.