Sunday, March 25, 2012

Cavalia Date

To say that I was excited to see Cavalia is an understatement. I told my hubby that it was like we were going to see the supermodels of horses, only supermodels that I want to see since regular supermodels make me all rage-y.

Although I did wear these, and may I say, "Meow."
Or neigh. Whatever.


They were surprisingly and wonderfully comfortable. I swear.
Plus, I look so much thinner at 8 feet tall!

Before we left, the hubby filled his time waiting for me to get Mav ready for our departure by taking her picture.


She says, "Get out and give me my treat balls!"

Then, the hubby turned to Atlas and Sweet Pea.


They couldn't have cared less if we were still home or not.


It's like he knows he's going to hate it.


But he loves me, so it's okay.
And yes, I do decorate with the laser disc.
Yes, we do have the laser disc player.
No, we don't watch them. We're not neanderthals.

We were early, mostly because between the time I bought our tickets and the show, Cavalia started selling tickets for parking that you were supposed to buy with your show tickets. I went online a couple days ago to see if they had better seats than ours available in case we wanted to see the show again during its run in St. Louis. That is when I noticed you were supposed to buy a ticket for parking with your damn show tickets and had a little spaz attack. That had definitely not been there when I got our tickets. Sigh.

The hubby told me to go ahead and get the parking ticket, so I did. I hate doing new things in that I don't like not knowing where I'm going, where I'm parking, the lay of the land, and so on. We left 90 minutes before the show, which was when the doors opened. We made good time and I snapped this photo from the car as we drove by on the underpass.


Let's pretend I'm not freaking out right about now.
"HORSES!"

Well, my husband, always good with directions, drove us by a million parking lots that we could have parked in without our lovely parking ticket. I started telling him, "I have enough cash that we can just park in one of these if you want."

He pulled into the actual part with the tents and guess what?


Boo-yah! Parking nirvana!

There was a small line to get in, but we walked through the tents without much wait time and found our seats with a little help. There were already a good chunk of people there. For a giant cathedral-tent-amphitheater type of thing, it was remarkably cozy. I wish they had allowed cameras. I know my descriptions won't do the show justice.

We had great seats - just off center, on an aisle, 10th row back. The first set of seats you could get without having to buy tickets where you meet the horses afterwards. Do I regret not spending an extra hundred bucks to meet the horses? HOLY F-YES.

The horses were beyond beautiful. They have over 45 horses in the stables, all either stallions or geldings (neutered stallions). No ladies. Males, especially stallions, are notoriously difficult when all together. They usually don't tolerate being around each other without fighting breaking out. It is kind of amazing that they are all together and do this show.

They don't use every horse in every performance, so we probably saw 25 or so horses. There were lots of white horses, 3 paints which were brown and white, and a lot of deep chestnut brown ones. There was even a mini-horse. Stun-ning. Every one of them.

The actual show was almost 3 hours long with a half hour intermission. That sounds like a long intermission but it wasn't if you wanted to use the restroom or get a souvenir or a snack (check, check, and check). They had concessions like you were at the movie theater. We were able to walk around and get back to our seats with time to spare, which is impressive considering how many people were there. They say the place seats over 2,000 people, and that sucker was full. It's hard to describe the show but I'll write here about some of the more memorable details and specific acts.

The band and singer were live during the show, and they followed the horses instead of following a set score. The set was lovely. There was this huge rectangular stage. The size of it is hard to describe. You had to turn your head all the way to one side and then quickly to the other - you could not take in the whole stage with a look. This was difficult when acts were happening on all parts of the stage and when acts were entering from both ends of the stage.

There was a sand floor, and a large curtain that changed with the scenery that could be raised, making the area twice as large with the back part being opened up. They could shut off and open up certain parts, so for example, if the horses were to run in a giant circle, they could. If they left the area open and the horses were to cross from front to back in the middle of the stage, then they would have to jump if they didn't take the long, gradually-raised-oval way around. If the horses were supposed to just run in front of the audience, they could shut off the back and then have that front run be in the spotlight.

Lots of the scenery was semi-see-through, and the band was about 2 stories up in the very back behind a gauze curtain. If they were lit up, you could see them, almost like ghosts. Otherwise, they were there but hidden from view.

There were fog and snow machines (the snow from the snow machines literally made the audience gasp when it came down at its fullest). They released leaves from the ceiling as well, as the show was sort of separated into seasons. Even though I was sure the horses would be the most beautiful thing in the show, there were parts where heavy rain fell through the middle of the stage, all the way from one end to the other, and in the darkness, they were able to light up the raindrops as they fell with this breathtaking vision of a giant (think 3 stories tall) white horse. It moved and ran and bucked, mane flowing.

If I'm being honest, I think the show we saw wasn't their best show. But that kind of made it even more interesting. One of the things they emphasize is that they don't force the horses to do anything. And some of the horses that were in our show were like, "Listen, Buddy. I don't wanna."

One of the first acts was a unbridled, unsaddled, completely free white horse. There was a little lake in the middle of the stage, and a woman danced all around in her long, ribbon-y, flowing costume. I think the horse usually interacts with her and drinks from her hands and all that, but this horse was sort of looking at her like, "Seriously?" At one point, the woman jumped up in the water, did a twirl, and flicked a little wave of water at the horse very forcefully with her feet as she completed a full circle in the air. The horse sort of stood there like, "Try that again. Do you realize I outweigh you by 1500 pounds? You are annoying the crap out of me."

And then the curtain on one end of the stage opened and that horse trotted out of there like, "La dee da."

Sometimes, one of the performers would ride a horse fully bridled and saddled around the ring. And we would all clap. Oh, St. Louis, how we like to clap at things. It's hilarious. Anyway, there was A LOT of clapping. During these times, I would think to myself, "Golly gee whiz, good job, Sir. Hats off to you. You rode a horse."

Then, you'd have another act where these aerial performers were whipping all over the damn place while riders circled on horses. The performers would flip all around, and they would reach out to the riders, and the horses would gallop around the stage as the riders held onto the fingertips of the aerialists. The performers on wires just floated with them. It was amazing, especially when you consider the costumes. Human and horse hair was long and flowing, and the performers' costumes were very elaborate. Very animated in movement and very colorful. Any normal horse would be all kinds of spooked by this crazy person in long glittery garb in the air flying next to them, right out of eyesight. To their credit, no matter what, the horses didn't seem bothered by anything like that during the show.

They had 6 bridled and saddled white horses with riders at one point doing all these synchronized moves. The costumes were so long that they puddled on the ground at the sides of the horses. That mixed with their shimmering colors and long human and horse hair... And the singing, which was essentially entirely a soprano making "ah ah ah ahhh ah ah" noises and not words for the whole show, and string accompaniment...

More than once, I had to keep myself from leaning over to the hubby and going, "One ring to rule them all!"

The horses would all stand facing us in a line, and then they would walk. Sideways. Crossing their front feet over one another. It's been a while but since I used to have a horse and kept him boarded at a working cattle farm that had lots of other horses, I know a little about the animal. They do not like to do stuff like that. There were a lot of little tricks in the show where the horses would do something that seems simple, but I'd think, "Oh, wow. That's pretty good. I know horses don't like to do that. They don't do those moves naturally." I especially thought this when they had the horses do a lot of dressage alone and in tight clumps.

One of the most memorable parts of the show was when a rider wiped out in spectacular fashion. Here is a link to a Cavalia video. I recognize the people and horses from the show we saw, so even though it's a little slow to watch, it's recent. The red headed woman in the video is the one who fell. At one point there, she is riding 2 horses while standing, one horse under each foot, horses side by side. In the show, there were 4 pairs of horses like this, each pair with a rider standing on top with one foot on each horse. In the show, they were, ahem, racing. Racing. RACING.

They turned the corner of the large oval stage, a very huddled together pack, right on top of each other, and the woman was in second place. She fell off quickly, so fast we couldn't tell what happened. She belly flopped to the ground between her own horses, hitting FACE FIRST.

Face first.

Complete face plant.

And then there were all the horses behind her. Thankfully, she rolled quickly out of the way, but it was very close. The audience audibly gasped. She popped up after a minute, gave a great big smile to the audience, and took a little humorous bow to our thunderous applause. Lord. If I had had time to think, I would have thought, "Oh, we just saw a horrible death where a woman was trampled."

During a similar routine, 2 performers stood on the ground and held out a long pole. They raised it to their waists. The pairs with riders standing on top of them would run and jump over the poles, horse and rider flying over easily.

Then, the performers on the ground got second performers to sit on their shoulders, raising the pole very, very high. I grabbed the hubby's leg at this point and actually said, "No."

The first time, of course, the man on the pair of horses just ducked while standing as they ran through. The audience laughed.

Then, he came around again, fast. The performer jumped up and over as the horses ran underneath. He landed on his feet again, one horse under each foot. And those horses were not trotting. They were running. It was very impressive. Terrifying, but impressive.

There was also an act where 6 unbridled, unsaddled, free chocolate brown horses came out with one performer standing on the ground. Now, one of these little bastards was in a mood. Which should not have been funny. Of course, it was.

He and one other horse from the group went to the side of the stage. He nipped at the other horse, refusing to let him by to join the others in the middle with the performer. Nip, nip, nip. The performer finally got him to come over, and the other followed, and then the 6 did these amazing little runs and zigzags around the performer.

Still, the little punky one nipped at his fellow horses and kicked his back feet up at everyone. It was like he agreed to do all that was required but he wasn't going to be that cool about it. There was never real viciousness but you also couldn't just pass it off as play. The tricks were done in a very close pack, so the 6 horses were all over each other. You literally couldn't have put a piece of paper between them most of the time. To get totally free horses to do moves that that is truly amazing.

The performer would then instruct the horses to run in a circle around him. Now, one of them and not the one who was being a little a**, decided he wanted to sort of stick to the game plan but throw in an extra set of fun for himself. That horse was adorably hilarious. The stage was open, but there was a barrier between the front half of the stage and the back. It was over waist high and was the length of the stage. The horses therefore were supposed to stay in the front half of the stage and do their act with the performer there.

However, every single time the guy asked the horses to do a full circle around him, that little bugger was like, "Weeeeeeeeeee! I jumps over the barrier and make a SUPER FULL oval run ALL the way around the stage!" He jumped up, ran around the back of the stage, jumped down, and joined the others. He'd run through the front of the stage with everyone doing the zigs and zags and turns and such, and then ha ha! Big oval time again! Jump up, over the barricade, around the back, then down, join the others. Heh heh heh. The poor performer just sort of kept looking at him and couldn't do a thing about it.

It was like the performer was thinking, "Oh, he's going around in the circle with the other horses! Got it out of his system!" Cue performer sigh. Then, "Wait! Oop. No. There he goes again. Bye, Horsey!"

And the horse was all jump, run, jump, "I'm back! He-ey! How's it hanging?" Zig, zag, and he's off again doing his solo fun run.

Good times. I guess we all like a little rebel once in a while.

There was also trick riding, where a fully bridled and saddled horse would run by at lightening speed with a rider/acrobat doing things like clinging upside down with one foot attached as they raced by. We've never seen Cirque de Soileil, but I imagine the performers were similar to the ones in those shows. There were a lot of acrobatics and, you know, general "I didn't know the human body could do that?" type of things happening. Also, it made me think about how I was never that flexible and how my goal weight is now my birth weight. I mean, I was there once, right? I can get back to it.

All in all, the show was great to see. Hard to describe, although my husband certainly was able to do so. In the car he said what we had just seen was, "A French-Romanian rodeo."

The husband tolerated the show, but I knew he didn't want to see it again. We compromised by buying the DVDs for me at the souvenir stand. And he doesn't know it yet, but I also bought something last week that will serve as a wonderful reminder of our Cavalia time. I will be taking his photo when that is unveiled. So stay tuned for that.

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