Rapunzeline manes, braid-crimped and gleaming, drape over magnificent heads held in best finishing-school alertness atop arched necks rippling with muscle—and that’s just the acrobats, those bit players in Cavalia whom nobody really comes to see. A fantasy equine circus with an impressive cast of animals and humans, the show that “explores the relationship between man and horse” is unapologetically all about the ponies.
The show has toured worldwide since 2003; the last time it came to the Bay Area was 2004, shortly after the production was created by Cirque du Soleil co-founder Normand Latourelle. This time around the big top shines and flutters like an ivory mirage of Camelot amid the asphalt parking lots of China Basin in the San Francisco Embarcadero.
Upon entering the complex of connected tents, the fantasy deepens: giant poles push the roof to soaring peaks to create rooms surrounded by dramatic, mural-size photographs of horses. The 160-foot-wide stage runs deep to a wide, elevated ledge that joins the front to become a tilted oval track large enough for a score of galloping horses to circle the space and high enough for aerialists to swoop and fly above the crowd. The walls behind are the canvas for lush projections that place the action in history—the painted caves of Lascaux, the Tang dynasty of China, the arena of the Coliseum. Airy scrims house slow-mo projections of a towering ghostly silver stallion rearing and plunging with holographic dimensionality—technology well employed to provide a loose narrative connecting vignettes that follow the long relationship between human and horse.
Snorting, prancing and bucking, suddenly dropping to their backs for a satisfying roll in the sand, shaking themselves, skin twitching as if deliberately showing off their polished coats, the horses perform gorgeously, and often with no evident human intervention. Two colts canter across the stage in the beginning, stopping like human toddlers to explore toys left in the sand while above them a projection of a mare giving birth lingers on the struggle of the newborn foal trying mightily to stand. Stretching its neck with exertion, it finally balances, surprised, on four splayed ladder-long legs. The audience bursts into spontaneous applause.
A sentimental crowd, these horse lovers; they filled the house to near capacity on a freezing Tuesday night in the middle of a storm. Many had come from out of state to see the spectacle that stops at only a few major cities in Europe and the U.S. each year. Come the weekends, families pack the house in spite of very steep ticket prices.
The story of Cavalia begins as a spring appears within the sand at center stage and Marianella Michaud moves into a dance with Orion, a white stallion that steps directly out of the illustrations in children’s storybooks. In a push and pull of growing trust, the two form a bond. Lovely, but the performance seems surprisingly listless, missing the intensity that projects character and leads the audience along with the story.
Perhaps because it was an off night (Tuesday), or maybe because it’s the second week of a long San Francisco run of a multi-year marathon, I was disappointed that most of the humans displayed no individual character nor authentic relationship with each other or with the horses. A significant exception was trainer Sylvia Zerbini, who worked her magnetism with individual and multiple stallions loose on the stage. Otherwise, the lack of oomph in the human performers made the two-plus hours of vignettes somewhat lifeless displays of skill.
Such discontent, though, never reached the young people I spoke with, whose “Awesome!” reviews were consistent with the standing ovation at the end of the show. Children and horse-lovers of all ages demonstrated unbridled enthusiasm—almost as rare a phenomenon as the sight of leaping, plunging horses in our midst.
Cavalia
China Basin, San Francisco (next to AT&T Park)
Tues-Sun through Dec. 12
Tickets $45-$240; www.cavalia.net.
