If you like horses and the tent show Cavalia ever comes to town you absolutely have to see it. A truly amazing and magical circus like experience but with highly trained horses, great lighting and effects and amazing stunts.
From the the Atlanta Journal-Constitution web site accessatlanta.com
“Normand Latourelle, creator and artistic director of “Cavalia,” the equestrian spectacle that opens Tuesday under a supersize big top at Atlantic Station, protests that he’s not a “horse person.” Yet few have done more to celebrate the power and grace of all things equine than the Cirque du Soleil co-founder, whose state-of-the-art horse spectacular has been seen by more than 2.5 million people across the globe since its September 2003 premiere.
“I think they’re the most beautiful animal on Earth. They have power, they’re very noble, they’re very frightening,” producer Normand Latourelle says about horses.
Frederic Chehu “I think they’re the most beautiful animal on Earth. They have power, they’re very noble, they’re very frightening,” producer Normand Latourelle says about horses.
“Before I had the idea of starting the show, the closest I’d been to a horse was about 500 feet, in a field, and that’s what I knew about horses, some kind of animal in the field,” he says. “I’d never been close to a horse in my life.”
But Latourelle, who left Cirque in 1985 to concentrate on raising his young family, started yearning to get back on the road when he hit 40, and he didn’t want to compete with his past. “I didn’t want to be a ‘Me, too!’ ” is how he says it.
He had been struck by how a horse, really no more than an extra amid a two-legged cast of more than 100, had commanded attention in a show he produced in Quebec, and the idea of “Cavalia” grew exponentially from there. He was well aware that Cirque was a circus without animals, “So I knew that going with the horse will leave me the field.”
Still, “Cavalia” has its Cirque-like aspects: It’s a transporting experience with its dreamy projected imagery, billowing costumes, ethereal music and bigger-than-life scale. Yet it also boasts the considerable horsepower of 60 four-legged stars, which plays to the horse lover in almost everyone.
We talked to the French-Canadian producer, who blended into the trendy crowd in his dark-colored casual duds at an Atlantic Station restaurant, over lunch recently. He came across as utterly down to earth, except for the many times his inventive mind and attention to detail made him seem like an issue of Popular Mechanics come to life.
On the equine star power that he first witnessed in his show “Las Légendes Fantastiques,” staged in Drommondville, Quebec: “The horse was not important, just had to be there, and this was a big production. It was just crossing the stage, and every time it [did], I realized that the audience was not looking at the performers, they were looking at the horse. The director came to me and said, ‘I’d love to get rid of that horse, he’s stealing the focus.’ So my reaction was, well, if he’s stealing focus, then he’s a star, so let him express himself. … This is where I got attracted by the horse. I got attracted by him as a performer, not as an animal.”
On his research into horses as performers: “I was so innocent [in terms of] what they can do, what they cannot do, what they are afraid of. When I started to write my script, I went to competitions, rodeos, but I didn’t really know. You approach a horse person, and tell him, ‘OK, I’m going to have acrobats coming down very fast over the horse, and catch the saddle and be pulled like a slingshot by the bungee …’ And a horse person would say, ‘You’re crazy, you can’t do that with a horse!’ So … I started to write about and think about what we should do in the show.”
On his trailblazing approach to production: “You know, if you give me a regular theater with a proscenium and tell me, ‘Write a script,’ I won’t be able to do it. What I like is to create the space, and create not only the performance itself but create a new way of experiencing the performing arts. I think that’s the modernity of the performing arts‚ because now we’re trying to include all the tools and technology that exists. … I like [producing] not only the content but also the container, let’s put it that way.”
On how horses clicked as a subject: “I started to study on horse history and I found out it was the history of humanity. So it was very inspiring, because the history of humanity is very large.”
On his first three years of developing “Cavalia,” before he drew up a business plan to attract investors: “I had to spend pretty much money before I decided to go [forward] because I wanted to be sure I was not doing something that would fail. … When I wrote the business plan, I knew I had something strong.”
On his initial struggle to line up backers: “It was very difficult to find [investors]. Because they’d say, ‘A show with horses? Who’s going to attend a show with horses?’ It was a difficult sale. Because I make no concession. And it’s always scary to business people when you have the producer who’s also the creative guy. They say, ‘OK, who is the leader here, is it the producer or the artistic director?’And my answer always is it’s the artistic director.”
On his ultimate goal in anything he creates: “To deliver happiness for the public. That’s my ultimate goal in life.”
Why people are enraptured by horses, Part 1: “An Arabian guy, I told him, the people who come to ‘Cavalia,’ less than half of them are horse people. They’re not riders, they don’t know horses, they come just to get entertained. But you see their faces [as the show progresses, and] they laugh and sometimes they cry, and when they go out of the tent, they were touched. And I say, that’s really surprising. And this guy answers me that every human being has horse in his blood. Which makes sense. My grandfather had one horse. My grand-grandfather had five horses. And if you go back, rewind for 5,000 years, we’ve all been with horses.”
Why people are enraptured by horses, Part 2: “I think they’re the most beautiful animal on Earth. They have power, they’re very noble, they’re very frightening. And you look at the shape, it’s fabulous, the way nature designed it. That’s why I was so attracted by the idea of having horses, because I like the aesthetic. I’m a guy who works a lot with how it looks. I like to dress [performers], give a nice aesthetic. You work as a creator, what you want to deliver is something beautiful. You want to be more beautiful than the average daily life.”
On the message of “Cavalia”: “Probably the audience, they can read that: The horses are kind of the survival speakers of the nature. Because if you push them too much, like we do right now with nature, it can bite you. If you bring a horse to his natural behavior, he can tell you a lot, and half of the show, the horses are free onstage.”
On when the horses don’t obey: “I like it! I keep telling the trainer, it doesn’t matter. … It’s part of the beauty, this spontaneity that you don’t get in any Cirque show. Because every Cirque show [operates like clockwork]. The lights are almost run by computer, because [everyone] know the cues. But ‘Cavalia,’ the show varies from one show to the next. Sometimes it’s minus or plus 10 minutes, and that’s because of the horses. We have a live band, and it’s one of the most challenging jobs in the show. If the horse is supposed to do one round of the stage, and he decides to do five, the band is like, ‘OK, when is he going out?’ And they have to play, have to follow it.”
On the way the show evolves: “If you saw the show six years ago and then today, you’d recognize 20 percent of it, because people change, horses change. Horses and people are not machines, they don’t do exactly the same thing. And you have to adapt. And because every time I see something, I have a little idea. That’s the problem of being the artistic director and the producer. The producer suffers a lot, because [the artistic director says], ‘OK, let’s put in three more acrobats.’ ”
On how much Cirque does and doesn’t inform “Cavalia”: “It’s a tough question to answer, because Cirque has so many shows. … But the closest thing that exists to compare ‘Cavalia’ with is still Cirque. The people who come to see a Cirque show won’t be disappointed by ‘Cavalia,’ but they won’t see a Cirque show. It’s not the same thing. It’s like comparing … I’m going to make it a little gross [generalization] here … if you’re a classical music lover, if you go to see a concerto of Bach or you go to see a concerto of Beethoven. The similarity, it’s classical music, but that’s it. This is about the same thing. ‘Cavalia’ is a touring show under a big top but it doesn’t use the round like Cirque still does. With ‘Cavalia,’ we’re facing the audience, so you enter into a different kind of theater [to start with].”
On if he’s become a horse person after seven years of developing and six years of touring with “Cavalia”: “Now I can say I start to know, but I’m still learning. Every day, I get surprised.”
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