The renowned Cavalia troupe took an interesting route to introduce its audience to its latest production – which premiered Wednesday night in St. Louis.
Before performers took the stage, a video carried the audience through a foal being born in a green meadow among white flowers.
It was just a horse and its newborn… no people.
The 200-ft wide image set the tone for “Cavalia: A Magical Encounter between Human and Horse.” Normand Latourelle, founder president and artistic director of Cavalia Inc., wanted the birth of a horse to be the first thing people see.
After the audience experienced this, the show exploded into fantastical, dreamlike scenes with purebred horses, aerialists, acrobats, and trick riders. Acrobats bungeed down from ten-story heights doing flips in the air while the horses raced in a circle below them – with their riders standing on their backs.
“We really wanted to convey two things: beauty and the relationship between horse and man,” said Alain Gauthier, artistic coordinator and choreographer.
Cavalia’s horse training is based upon a philosophy of understanding the horses rather than making them understand the human beings around them, Gauthier said.
In one breathtaking scene titled “La Vida,” two male riders circled the arena with their horses while two female aerialists (Jennifer Lecuyer and Marta Bataller) flew in the air along side of them. Then, the male riders propelled them into the air, and the women danced angelically above them.
The imagery comes from a Japanese samurai myth that an angel always accompanies a horse and its rider, said Gauthier, who choreographed all the dancers’ and riders’ movements.
When it comes to choreographing a scene like this, he said that it takes months of working with the horses to see what they would be comfortable with. To start, Gauthier himself hung upside down in the arena and slowly let the horses get near him. Each movement must be introduced in steps. If they miss a step, they might get pushed back two weeks in training because the horses are too nervous to try that certain movement again, he said.
Horses can sense people coming from a far distance, and they can also sense the performers’ emotions, he said. That’s why the performers must remain grounded.
“When the horses are acting up, we ask the performers, ‘What’s up with you today?’” Gauthier said.
Gauthier performed as an aerialist when Latourelle co-founded Cirque du Soleil in 1985. When Latourelle left the Cirque du Soleil to start his own project, Gauthier joined him in Cavalia as a choreographer.
Possibly one of the crowd’s favorites was Elise Verdoncq’s “Grand Liberte.” Amidst falling autumn leaves, Verdoncq, 26, gracefully used hand signals and vocal cues to lead five horses in synchronized movements. Verdoncq said she started riding and training horses when she was 6. To get all the horses to move together in the Liberte piece, it took years of training each horse individually, she said.
At the premiere, not every horse was ready to be on cue, but Verdoncq said that’s the nature of the show. The horses are the stars, and the performers, in a sense, follow their lead.
Between the mystical music and the affection between the performers and horses, each scene stirs up perhaps some nostalgia of childhood horse tales. And with those tales come the electric feelings harbored in fantasy and possibility. Along with amazing acts, the show tells poetic stories that many productions of this size fail to do. Gauging from the audience members’ expressions and gasps, Cavalia succeeded in setting its desired tone of mutual respect, kindness, patience and trust.
The White Big Top will be at the corner of 7th and Cerre Streets, across Highway 40 from Busch Stadium for another few weeks. For more information about the show, visit www.cavalia.net.
