misanthropy
10-28-2003, 12:15 PM
Oct. 27, 2003. 01:00 AM
Horseman's whispers make magic at Cavalia (http://cavalia.net)
CHRIS YOUNG
STAFF REPORTER
Source: Toronto Star (http://www.torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1067209807872)
A Lusitano the colour of aged buckskin rehearses on a riser, tap dancing to a beat only he can hear. Three dressage riders put the horses beneath them through their dainty paces, and downstage, inside a ring, an enormous Belgian Warmblood runs in circles, while off to the side a snow-white stallion nips at his hapless partner.
Add it up and there's more than five tons of four-legged, all-male equine motion on a stage 50 metres across and 20 metres deep. In the midst of it, serene and looking about as animated as a storefront mannequin, the fellow everyone calls "The Master" is asking for more.
"Can I get Templado out here please?" Frederic Pignon asks in French. Out comes the star of the show, the incorrigible adolescent grown up into a preening, prancing adult with a mane of Duran Duran hair and an attitude to match — and inconceivably, this goes on, a small space filled up with these large animals.
Then they leave, excepting the three white stallions — Templado, 17, the boss; Fasto, 10, the rebellious younger brother trying to make a name for himself; and the always put-upon goody two shoes Aetes, 13 — assembling in front of Pignon like schoolchildren at the morning bell, fidgety but attentive.
"Hurry up," he says softly. "Take your place."
They obey, standing stock still.
Wait. It isn't supposed to work this way. These are male horses, fiery and unpredictable and full of themselves. That's one man seemingly in complete control of them, trusting them and getting the same back. It's a nice picture, and it cuts right through to the questions at the heart of Pignon's act, central to this Cavalia show playing to rave reviews and packed houses under a very big top in the Distillery District.
Can a horse find happiness in this kind of world — not a Cirque, and not a circus, but something that Pignon calls a collaboration between equals?
And most of all, can a man talk to the animals?
Watch him as he walks beside them, stands to hold a regal head in his hands, eye to eye and murmuring, nuzzling, then stepping back to tap them lightly on the flank with a badine. They circle him in a slow trot, and with a wave of the crop and a light word they stop. He turns his palms down and they are sinking slowly to the dirt floor, and he follows them down, giving them an encouraging smile.
"Amazing," says a watching Alain Gauthier, Cavalia's acrobatics chief. "You get the feeling the horses don't belong to him — he belongs to the horses."
There's something going on here, but what is it? Talking? Some kind of body language? Is this guy a —
"I know the term," he stops you. "It's nice — but it's such a fashion thing, a caricature."
Horse whisperer. There. We said it — an old name turned into new-agey catchphrase. Overused. Misunderstood. The stuff of popular romance, a five-hanky special, the crinkly-faced hardboot a sage amid the sagebrush, whispering sweet nothings on the wind.
Ask Pignon, and it's just empathy, observation, a smear of manure on the shoes — maybe even a little bit of a mission in a world gone terminally urban.
"I'm still the same horseman I always was," he says. "It's not whispering. It's a philosophy of life. None of this is new.
"If I can show people how it's possible to live with animals as a part of our lives, that's good. The worst for us is if we never connect with them at all, if we have no knowledge of them and no contact.
"In some ways, it's easier to work with horses than people. When you can't speak, you can't lie."
And when you can't lie, there is the basis for trust. And respect. As a young boy growing up in France's Loire valley, he and his brother and sister learned it, literally playing with horses after school each day the way their peers played with marbles. Their mates were retired discards, sore-legged no-hopers, mute misanthropes — manes and tails that his father, a teacher, took in out of pure interest. Pignon ran with them, played tag with them, rode them bareback up to the hills.
"We were like little Indians. There were no rules," he said. "When I went to agricultural school, we were like crazy men to the others. If a horse didn't jump, we'd try to have fun, to make him comfortable. They just wanted to whip him."
He met the classically trained, smooth-riding Magali Delgado, whose parents in the south of France bred Lusitanos, a noble and intelligent breed originally from Spain and Portugal. The couple struck out together, starting small at their four-hectare farm just outside Avignon — "We didn't always eat so good," Delgado recalls, "but the horses did" — and growing bigger, playing all over Europe and into the Caribbean with their horse spectacle.
"For a long time in our work, (we) felt like we were in another world," said Pignon. "We were ridiculed. Now people show up at our house, wanting to be taught."
Cavalia's artistic director, Normand Latourelle, knew nothing about these animals when he first conceived a horse-themed show. As a longtime showbiz producer and the former general manager of Cirque de Soleil, he knew what he didn't want: No traditional horsey stuff, no circus in the round, no Cirque-style bump and grind.
"When I first saw Fred and Magali working, I couldn't believe it," said Latourelle. "He was just playing with these stallions. The script I'd written already was about the relationship between man and horses, and here I was, seeing my dream come true."
The feeling was mutual, Pignon and Delgado yearning to bust out of the sequins-and-pony circuit. To prepare for this Cavalia, Pignon took the same stress-management courses that French bus drivers take. "If I'm stressed, the horses are worse," he says. "I try to create a harmony. It's like a little circle we're in. They need to feel secure, and protected. We do that, and we become somebody important to them."
Pignon and Delgado, both 36, are the equestrian directors of the two-hour show that tells a sometimes dreamy, sometimes riotous history of horses and humankind. They are very much a team — just married. They haven't even had a honeymoon yet. Instead, they live in a rented house near the Distillery district where the big top sits. Early afternoon they head over to the stable tent to rehearse. "Every day when I work with my horses, I feel like I know nothing," Pignon says. "There's always something new, some detail. I think we're just in the beginning of knowing what's going on in their heads."
The illusion here, as in any animal act, is that the animals are willing participants. The noise, the crowds, the applause — it doesn't naturally register anything in them but fear. More traditional training methods are fear-based — is it any wonder that "breaking" a horse is the term used for teaching them?
"Usually in this kind of environment people want to go fast, they push the horses, they need results right away," said Pignon. "I've never believed in that."
There's an old story about the rider who gallops all night, and never sees the horse beneath them. Neither Pignon nor Delgado will ever be mistaken for that rider. Instead, there is a negotiation. It's unpredictable, as it should be, and never boring.
Just don't expect Pignon to call it mystical. Or ask Corky Randall, a fellow who knows a thing about Hollywood illusion and horsey reality. The 74-year-old Randall, whose father staged the chariot ride for Ben Hur, schooled Roy Rogers' Trigger, and trained the Black Stallion and dozens more for film and TV. He met up with these two in Orlando recently,
where they watched each other work.
Horse whisperer. That's a good 'un.
"It's like people think it's a magic wand or something — that's a bunch of crap," says Randall. "It's no big secret, but only a few people can do it. Whatever it is, Fred's got it."
________________________________
While the training methods are more humane, how is this any different that the whole Siegfried and Roy act with using animals as entertainment? Why must they have to perform? It's all about $$$$$...
Horseman's whispers make magic at Cavalia (http://cavalia.net)
CHRIS YOUNG
STAFF REPORTER
Source: Toronto Star (http://www.torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1067209807872)
A Lusitano the colour of aged buckskin rehearses on a riser, tap dancing to a beat only he can hear. Three dressage riders put the horses beneath them through their dainty paces, and downstage, inside a ring, an enormous Belgian Warmblood runs in circles, while off to the side a snow-white stallion nips at his hapless partner.
Add it up and there's more than five tons of four-legged, all-male equine motion on a stage 50 metres across and 20 metres deep. In the midst of it, serene and looking about as animated as a storefront mannequin, the fellow everyone calls "The Master" is asking for more.
"Can I get Templado out here please?" Frederic Pignon asks in French. Out comes the star of the show, the incorrigible adolescent grown up into a preening, prancing adult with a mane of Duran Duran hair and an attitude to match — and inconceivably, this goes on, a small space filled up with these large animals.
Then they leave, excepting the three white stallions — Templado, 17, the boss; Fasto, 10, the rebellious younger brother trying to make a name for himself; and the always put-upon goody two shoes Aetes, 13 — assembling in front of Pignon like schoolchildren at the morning bell, fidgety but attentive.
"Hurry up," he says softly. "Take your place."
They obey, standing stock still.
Wait. It isn't supposed to work this way. These are male horses, fiery and unpredictable and full of themselves. That's one man seemingly in complete control of them, trusting them and getting the same back. It's a nice picture, and it cuts right through to the questions at the heart of Pignon's act, central to this Cavalia show playing to rave reviews and packed houses under a very big top in the Distillery District.
Can a horse find happiness in this kind of world — not a Cirque, and not a circus, but something that Pignon calls a collaboration between equals?
And most of all, can a man talk to the animals?
Watch him as he walks beside them, stands to hold a regal head in his hands, eye to eye and murmuring, nuzzling, then stepping back to tap them lightly on the flank with a badine. They circle him in a slow trot, and with a wave of the crop and a light word they stop. He turns his palms down and they are sinking slowly to the dirt floor, and he follows them down, giving them an encouraging smile.
"Amazing," says a watching Alain Gauthier, Cavalia's acrobatics chief. "You get the feeling the horses don't belong to him — he belongs to the horses."
There's something going on here, but what is it? Talking? Some kind of body language? Is this guy a —
"I know the term," he stops you. "It's nice — but it's such a fashion thing, a caricature."
Horse whisperer. There. We said it — an old name turned into new-agey catchphrase. Overused. Misunderstood. The stuff of popular romance, a five-hanky special, the crinkly-faced hardboot a sage amid the sagebrush, whispering sweet nothings on the wind.
Ask Pignon, and it's just empathy, observation, a smear of manure on the shoes — maybe even a little bit of a mission in a world gone terminally urban.
"I'm still the same horseman I always was," he says. "It's not whispering. It's a philosophy of life. None of this is new.
"If I can show people how it's possible to live with animals as a part of our lives, that's good. The worst for us is if we never connect with them at all, if we have no knowledge of them and no contact.
"In some ways, it's easier to work with horses than people. When you can't speak, you can't lie."
And when you can't lie, there is the basis for trust. And respect. As a young boy growing up in France's Loire valley, he and his brother and sister learned it, literally playing with horses after school each day the way their peers played with marbles. Their mates were retired discards, sore-legged no-hopers, mute misanthropes — manes and tails that his father, a teacher, took in out of pure interest. Pignon ran with them, played tag with them, rode them bareback up to the hills.
"We were like little Indians. There were no rules," he said. "When I went to agricultural school, we were like crazy men to the others. If a horse didn't jump, we'd try to have fun, to make him comfortable. They just wanted to whip him."
He met the classically trained, smooth-riding Magali Delgado, whose parents in the south of France bred Lusitanos, a noble and intelligent breed originally from Spain and Portugal. The couple struck out together, starting small at their four-hectare farm just outside Avignon — "We didn't always eat so good," Delgado recalls, "but the horses did" — and growing bigger, playing all over Europe and into the Caribbean with their horse spectacle.
"For a long time in our work, (we) felt like we were in another world," said Pignon. "We were ridiculed. Now people show up at our house, wanting to be taught."
Cavalia's artistic director, Normand Latourelle, knew nothing about these animals when he first conceived a horse-themed show. As a longtime showbiz producer and the former general manager of Cirque de Soleil, he knew what he didn't want: No traditional horsey stuff, no circus in the round, no Cirque-style bump and grind.
"When I first saw Fred and Magali working, I couldn't believe it," said Latourelle. "He was just playing with these stallions. The script I'd written already was about the relationship between man and horses, and here I was, seeing my dream come true."
The feeling was mutual, Pignon and Delgado yearning to bust out of the sequins-and-pony circuit. To prepare for this Cavalia, Pignon took the same stress-management courses that French bus drivers take. "If I'm stressed, the horses are worse," he says. "I try to create a harmony. It's like a little circle we're in. They need to feel secure, and protected. We do that, and we become somebody important to them."
Pignon and Delgado, both 36, are the equestrian directors of the two-hour show that tells a sometimes dreamy, sometimes riotous history of horses and humankind. They are very much a team — just married. They haven't even had a honeymoon yet. Instead, they live in a rented house near the Distillery district where the big top sits. Early afternoon they head over to the stable tent to rehearse. "Every day when I work with my horses, I feel like I know nothing," Pignon says. "There's always something new, some detail. I think we're just in the beginning of knowing what's going on in their heads."
The illusion here, as in any animal act, is that the animals are willing participants. The noise, the crowds, the applause — it doesn't naturally register anything in them but fear. More traditional training methods are fear-based — is it any wonder that "breaking" a horse is the term used for teaching them?
"Usually in this kind of environment people want to go fast, they push the horses, they need results right away," said Pignon. "I've never believed in that."
There's an old story about the rider who gallops all night, and never sees the horse beneath them. Neither Pignon nor Delgado will ever be mistaken for that rider. Instead, there is a negotiation. It's unpredictable, as it should be, and never boring.
Just don't expect Pignon to call it mystical. Or ask Corky Randall, a fellow who knows a thing about Hollywood illusion and horsey reality. The 74-year-old Randall, whose father staged the chariot ride for Ben Hur, schooled Roy Rogers' Trigger, and trained the Black Stallion and dozens more for film and TV. He met up with these two in Orlando recently,
where they watched each other work.
Horse whisperer. That's a good 'un.
"It's like people think it's a magic wand or something — that's a bunch of crap," says Randall. "It's no big secret, but only a few people can do it. Whatever it is, Fred's got it."
________________________________
While the training methods are more humane, how is this any different that the whole Siegfried and Roy act with using animals as entertainment? Why must they have to perform? It's all about $$$$$...