windinthemaples

Cavalia is in town. The traveling show, sorta Cirque du Soleil with horses, pitched a cluster of giant white circus tents on an empty downtown lot several weeks ago. There have been posters and billboards everywhere. I splurged on the best seat I could buy at last night's show--second row, dead center. I found a sitter, also a mother of a 2 year-old boy, on SitterCity and away I went!

It's upscale circus on the site of a future high-rise building. The seats were stadium style folding plastic, the restrooms are in purpose built trailers, and everything smells a bit like horse poop. The horses, though...the horses. It was worth every penny I paid and more.

Along with my obnoxiously good seat, I got their Rendez-Vous package which entitled me to a few additional perks. Before the show, we VIPs were treated to a clublike experience inside a special tent where there was a free buffet of appetizers and, during intermission, a spread of desserts. It was everything from duck mousse tartlettes and brie to carrot sticks and toast points. A bar poured free and plentiful drinks--champagne by the boatload. Some very Enya instrumental music from the show was piped into the tent and video monitors had images of horses, at liberty in beautiful natural surroundings, cavorting and looking mystical.

(After the show, the people in the Rendez-Vous section got to have an autograph session with two of the performers before being allowed a self-guided tour of the barn-tent and their 60+ happily-munching-hay horsie contingent. This promise of seeing the barn and getting up close to the horses was really my entire motivation for buying the ticket. It was neat to see and surprisingly ordinary.)

So then the show was announced and we were all able to walk from our tent-club to the show tent and then up to our seats. My seat was second row, elevated well above the people in the front row, and no more than twenty feet from the sands of the stage floor. It was un-freaking-believable. There was nothing between me and these performers than a middle aged guy with a gold watch and a hip-height wooden wall. At times, it felt like I was only just able to keep myself from leaping out there and getting arrested.

Anything I can say about the show will diminish its spell. It is a dreamscape of horses, haunting music, and lush costumery. There are dancers, aerialists, trick, vaulting, and dressage riders telling this wordless story of man's relationship with horses, the soul-deep aspects of that ancient connection, the beautiful, transitory nature of life and the cycle of the seasons. The technical aspects are there, the horses are glorious and well-trained, and certainly the addition of the aerialists and other two-legged performers was unique, but mostly it wasn't anything that hasn't long been a staple of the standard dressage exposition. What was brilliant about it, though, was that the military aspects of dressage were stripped away. Those riding in the ten horse pinwheel movement were dressed like elves from Lord of the Rings, long hair, flowing skirts and sleeves hiding every cue of hand and leg. The music was phenomenal and seamless, the lighting was otherwordly, everything they did made dressage look as magical as possible even when it wasn't always as precise as you could see in other venues. The trick riding, the gymnastics, the vaulting were like playful bright interludes between the big numbers.

I spent the entire first half of the show weeping and the second half with my hands to my mouth in awe. It was a transformational experience to be there.