Odysseo is a grand equine and human spectacle
Stars’ unscripted moments most memorable
Odysseo by Cavalia Where: Big Top, Fort Road and Yellowhead Running: from July 9 to Aug. 10 Tickets: 1-866-999-8111, cavalia.net
The most breathtaking theatrical effect in Odysseo, a magical new equine/acrobat spectacle from the creators of Cavalia, is the way horses and riders come toward you, approaching across vast distances through the mists of time.
The Earth seems to turn at moments like that: Storms gather and lift, twilight darkens the forests of medieval Europe, dawn lights Renaissance pools or red-rock canyons, or the African desert. It’s a lavish multimedia illusion, this dreamy grandscale horse-human odyssey of 5,000 years standing. And what you need to conjure it, apparently, is a lot of, well, everything — including theatrical sophistication, budget and space.
Take the tent: this, my friends, is not exactly camping: Odysseo’s multi-turreted white Big Top, is the world’s largest touring tent, the size of two NFL football fields with a stage large enough to hold a 13-metre mountain or serial sand dunes, and a curved panoramic upstage screen equivalent to three of the paltry IMAX variety.
This is the crazily epic playground for a corps of crack Quebec lighting designers, videographers and projection image-makers with their 18 high-definition 3-D projectors — and cast of 120 performers, divided between two species, whose ancient bond is the whole point of the show. In this relationship, of course, Odysseo, with its international ensemble of 70 gorgeous horses (representing 11 breeds) and 49 gravity-resistant humans, is an heir to Cavalia, which pitched its tent here in 2012. But the massive escalation in scale and forces — a third more horses in a tent fully double the size of its predecessor (with the same 2,000 seats) — means more space for hellfor-leather speed and tricks of long-distance optics and depth perspective.
The performers, fourand two-legged, do seem to emerge from the big wide world, instead of occupying an artful design. One drummer, far off on a hill, comes closer and turns into a percussion production number. One white Arabian noodling in a woodsy clearing, thinking his horse thoughts, turns into a whole ebb and flow of Arabian camaraderie, communing with a delicate-looking human companion (trainer Elise Verdoncq, who whispers or moves her hands in the tiniest gestures).
The marriage of human acrobatics to equine choreography, a bit arbitrary in Cavalia, seems more inventive in Odysseo. In one stunning scene, a full-sized merry-go-round descends from the sky, and the acrobat-riders are delivered to their carousel horses by real ones. After that, the humans attach themselves to the poles upside down, or horizontally, in feats of strength clearly impossible for our species, a witty image of ambiguous artifice. Later, a formal pageant of riders turns into another sort of carousel: whirling trapeze artists attached to silks, propelled by galloping horses.
There is nothing skimpy about Odysseo, either in the conception or the execution. It’s a show with an excellent live band (including a violinist who seems to groove to the music of the spheres), and a sort of tumbling “chorus”: a nine-member team of extremely personable gymnasts, all from the same Guinean village and springy of both body and spirit, catapult off the earthen stage, and each other. They never tire; they can’t seem to stop either smiling or forming human sculptures.
As in Cavalia, there are furiously paced scenes in which horses fly by, with riders clinging upside down to their sides or doing precipitous handstands at crazy angles, or standing atop pairs of them, Roman charioteer-style. For me, the trick-riding scenes, while spectacular in the doing, seem to go on a little too long — or, if you’ve seen Cavalia, perhaps they’re just the most recognizable. The riders beam at us: Look Ma, no hands! The horses gallop at pell-mell speed. Horsepower has always involved speed, and there are only so many ways that can be expressed.
The most transporting and memorable production numbers in the show, created by Quebec’s Normand Latourelle (and directed by Wayne Fowkes), aren’t choreographed at all. They rely instead on the fascinating, unprogrammed allure of the real stars of the show, the horses. In my favourite scene, at the start of Act II, horses gather and mingle onstage. Some are sociable, some not; most are relaxed enough to actually lie down and roll around in the Odysseo dirt.
On the night I caught the show in Calgary, one horse, happy to chill, was loathe to get up; I know how he feels. Gradually, the stage fills with people and horses just running around together. That kind of spontaneity and rapport is an exhilarating sight.
The knockout finale, which starts with the ballet of a single exquisite horse and rider (Omerio and Verdoncq respectively), involves water: a waterfall, a reflecting pool, then a lake that fills the stage. The cast splashes through it at top speed, with a wild joy that speaks to the mysterious, mythical beauty of horses, and their strange and wonderful connection with people. There’s live magic, the best kind, in that.