Behind the Curtains of 'Cavalia'

A cluster of nine white tents, peaks reaching to the sky, has become part of the landscape of St. Louis Park since “Cavalia” started its Twin Cities run on Sept. 21. The mystery of “Cavalia”—with its many horses and human performers entering and exiting the stage in a way that suggests the audience is being allowed a glimpse into some other, more beautiful world which exists somewhere beyond—is perhaps rivaled only by the mystery of what backstage life must be like with Normand Latourelle’s fantastical show. 

Patch unveiled some of that mystery to find a veritable community inside the big white tents—and a joyful one at that.

Tent City

With seven shows a week, there’s little rest for the “Cavalia” talent, whose days are filled with hours of rehearsals, training, reviewing of the previous night’s show and, of course, performances. With two performances on Saturdays, Mondays are the only days off. And what do “Cavalia” performers and staff do then?

“Sleep, visit the city, groceries, laundry, maybe cook dinner because that’s the only night where you can actually cook,” Jennifer Lecuyer, one of the show’s main aerialists, said with a laugh. 

But it’s clear that those involved are there because they love it, because something inside them has drawn them there, and together the team of artists and crew members from all over the world has formed a family of sorts. 

Living and traveling together—some of them for years—and performing dangerous stunts on a daily basis, the performers and crew members have forged bonds based on trust and mutual respect. 

Talking about the aerialists’ relationships with the show’s riggers, Lecuyer said, “You do have to have a close relationship and a lot of trust in that person. There’s a particular move where there are two horses coming underneath us and the bungee comes down and we grab onto the horse and, for that particular manipulation, it’s the riggers that are holding us and giving us that amount of rope that we need to catch.

"So there can’t be any mistakes, you need to have a lot of trust. And every night after the show, we do have a talk with our riggers like, ‘I felt like you gave me a little too much rope,’ or ‘I felt a little tight, like it was hard to catch.’ So every day, before you let go, you know that you had that talk about the show before. You do feel confident, but it does take a lot of discussions. But they’re so great, they’re really artists of their own, our riggers.” 

During the St. Louis Park run of “Cavalia,” the artists and crew are renting rooms in Minneapolis. But inside the tent city near the , Cavalia’s humans and horses have made themselves a home. 

JD Pelletier, “Cavalia’s” tour publicist, describes it as the opposite of camping, with days spent in tents and nights in more conventional living quarters.  

The Stars of the Show 

Perhaps the most pampered members of the show, though, are the ones who stay put: the horses.

“They’re the stars,” Pelletier said. 

And the stars receive their star treatment. A “Cavalia” horse’s day is made up of time spent outside, exercise and practice, down time, grooming, a shower with hot and cold water, and hair braiding by an artist named Giselle.  

Considerations like these are typical of “Cavalia,” an elaborate and extravagant show that keeps the well-being of its equine members at the forefront of it all. There are 42 horses in the stables, but only 30 perform in any show. And any horse the audience sees on stage performs for an average of just five minutes.   

“We could do the same show with maybe 20 horses, but it would make them work too much,” Pelletier said.

Once their performing days are over, the horses move to a farm in Sutton, Quebec, Canada, for lives of comfort and contentment. At the close of the Minneapolis run of shows, that’s where two of “Cavalia’s” horses—brothers who stay next to each other in the stables because of their strong emotional connection—are headed. They have been performing together in “Cavalia” since its beginning eight years ago. 

Horses’ performance tenures vary; Pelletier said how long any given horse remains in the show is up to the horse. 

“We don’t force it,” Pelletier added. “Everything is based on play. If he’s not having fun anymore, he goes to the farm.”

Everything Good Must Come to an End 

Soon, the “Cavalia” crew will move on from this city to another. It’s an undertaking, to be sure, but something that is by now second nature for the nomadic community.

“We’re really smart about how we move; everything’s really organized,” Callie Ryan, head of costuming, said. “Everything that’s outside my shop comes into my shop in a couple of hours and we’re out.” 

And then those white tents that piqued our curiosity and roused a childlike wonder will be gone, as if having existed in a dream.