Cavalia

[joflasher]

As I might not have mentioned here, the Boy took me to see Cavalia last weekend. Think Cirque du Soleil with horses. On one hand, it was a throughly enjoyable experience. The stage, sets, and music were wonderful. The acrobats couldn't be better. The horses, well, lets just say I think I put my hopes too high. The horse sets were fairly well done and tried very hard to draw the audience into the scene, to captivate and to astound. Is it their fault that they failed with me or is it mine?

Part of the problem, I'm sure, is that I kept reading reviews, both professional and private from other people who had seen the show. From those, I expected fairly spot on choreography, amazing stunts on horseback and happy horses. Some segments were right there. Others, not so much.


Bad:
First off, the vaulting segments were completely un-inspiring. I have seen better vaulting demonstrations using ameture kids competing at the PA Farm Show. I expected something that caliber or better, since Cirque du Soleil is known for their world class acrobats. Sure, this show had world class acrobats but they sure as hell weren't vaulting. What I saw was a one rider per horse doing a couple of jumps and poses and that was about it. No team work between people, no lifts, no tosses. Eh.

Another section I had problems with involved two women in white riding a matched pair of Lusitanos. One of the main themes of the skits was that they were to be mirrors of each other, neither sure which was the real pair. One horse was totally into the performance, keeping time with the music and his rider was nearly motionless in her requests to him. The other horse was distinctly Not Happy(tm) and his rider was constantly applying her crop and jabbing him in the mouth (Up down, up down, updown) to get the movements. He kept half rearing on her, prancing, head tossing and tail swishing, trying to avoid it all and none of it was in time with the music. I'm not blaming the rider, you ride the horse you have at the moment and you can't exactly call it quits for the day once you are out on stage. Still, it was distracting to see her hands constantly in motion and the horse so obviously unhappy and fighting her. That segment just didn't do anything for me since one of the major themes failed so spectacularly.

I sometimes felt that the horses onstage were a distraction from the amazing acrobats, since the horses were often just circling the action and not really contributing to it.

Finally, one set had a famous horse whisperer working with three unfettered stallions. Many of the pictures of what they would do were never substantiated in real life. The demo we got mainly involved the horses following him around, bowing and laying down on command. Like the vaulting, I've seen better and it wasn't really all that impressive. Of course, one of stallions (we got two whites, one black) was insisting on trying to start something with one of the others, so maybe the trainer was just trying to get the demo over with before he had a full blown fight on his hands.



Good:
They did a section with riders standing on a team of two horses who were running full tilt around the stage, jumping things. It was impressive, although once again one of the horses was being pissy and kept bucking while in harness. Needless to say, his "rider/stander" guy kept falling off. I'll give him credit, he gamely kept getting back on and some of those falls had to HURT. At the end, they double hitched two teams and had a woman drive the four horse team around, over jumps, ect. She totally rocked.

Another lady did what was basically a well choreographed dressage demo. The thing that totally blew my socks off was that she then removed the saddle and bridle, put a chest rope on the horse and did it all again, this time bareback with only a little string around his neck to communicate with. Very good demo.

The acrobats doing the standard ground/pole/rope work were wonderful. I LOVE acrobats in motley and these guys had it down and were everything you'd expect from Cirque du Soleil.

My absolutely FAVORITE part, though I'm rather embarrassed to admit it, was a cowboy style mounted section where the horses galloped hell for leather across the stage and the riders did various tricks, grabbing things off of the ground, ducking behind their horses, vaulting on and off, all without the horses slowing down. It takes balls to do those things at that speed and the riders and horses looked like they were having a blast


I'm not saying it wasn't a good show. It was. Somehow, though, I never really got INTO most of it.

Comments

[alabastard.livejournal.com]

Too bad, the parts that failed at your show were done near flawlessly in the show I saw. The horses might be getting tired, and they do have some young ones to incorporate into the show, but none bucked or acted up in the show I saw, in fact I was glad the man fell after jumping a pole from Roman standing position, just to show that it was not as easy as they made it look.

The vaulting was the only thing I thought could have been better, the "mirrors" were spot on, and the man playing with horses had them rearing on hand command and charing him and each other around, it was beautiful to my eyes.