Tonight Cavalia: A Magical Encounter Between Human and Horse premieres in St. Louis under the White Big Top next to Busch Stadium. Yes, it’s the show with all the billboards of a white horse all around town.
If you’re a horse-lover, you will probably love this – as the 49 horses representing 10 different breeds are the stars of the show. And the acrobats twirling in the air and flipping on the ground are great perks too.
St. Louisans have a great love for the circus, largely ingrained in them at a young age through the city’s own Circus Flora.
What people may not know is that Cavalia, the Canadian-based show with Cirque du Soleil roots, will give a portion of the proceeds to Circus Flora’s community outreach programming, including Share the Circus, the Community Circus Camps under the Big Top and Clowns on Call.
Circus Flora Artistic Director and Producer Ivor David Balding believes the “circus functions as a universal language – a performance of the human body, a community activity that unites the hearts and souls of everyone – filling a need present inside each and every human being, that cannot be sustained by the icy glare of a television or computer screen.”
Every year, Circus Flora offers a range of outreach and educational programs to the community. Circus Flora’s newest project, Clowns on Call, reaches delivers the magic of circus to hospitalized children. Circus Flora auditions, assembles and trains a team of professional Clown Doctors to work with hospital administrative and medical staff to minimize the stress of patients and their families during hospitalization and treatment.
And through the “Share the Circus” program, Circus Flora gives free tickets to children and families from underserved communities. As part of the Community Circus Camps, Circus Harmony’s trainers teach performance skills to underserved children from the city neighborhoods in which Circus Flora performs. These camps are held during Circus Flora’s performance run, taking advantage of the unique opportunity to provide children with a once-in-a-lifetime experience under a real big-top tent, utilizing professional equipment, animals and the skills of the Flying Wallendas, the Zoppé family and other world-class performers.
Normand Latourelle, the visionary and creator of Cavalia, commended Circus Flora’s work in the community at press conference on March 20. After co-founding Cirque du Soleil, Latourelle said he was looking for something that involved animals in the same large-scale innovative production.
He said Cavalia is “a tribute to horses and a celebration of the relationship that humans and horses share together.”
For more information about the show, visit www.cavalia.net.
For more information about Circus Flora’s community outreach programming, visit http://www.circusflora.org/about/community_outreach.
