Angela Mitchell: What were some of the logistical or practical challenges to bringing Cavalia to life, with sixty magnificent horses of a dozen different breeds as performers?
Normand Latourelle: I didn't figure out that it would be such a challenge at first! But it is a challenge we are constantly meeting. First, we want to give the horses the best life as possible, and we design everything surrounding the horses, so when we come to our setup, it's a huge space, it’s 200,000 feet – four times a football field, it’s huge. And when you go to the stables, you'll see they have huge boxes and also a huge paddock, a warm-up area and arena. It’s all under tents, and all the tents are connected together, for the largest touring tent in the world, our big white top.
Angela Mitchell: My favorite thing about the big white top is how elegant it is. From a production standpoint it is completely different from any other traditional circus tent people might be expecting.
Normand Latourelle: I first designed the stage, I wanted a place where the horse will have enough room to play, to run, in order to give a playground to the horse. So it is a stage that is 150 feet wide, the biggest touring stage, and it's 80 feet deep, which also is very big. If you look at other traditional shows, or even opera stages, meanwhile, they might be 80 feet wide and 60 feet deep. But we wanted to go bigger, and I needed people in the tent itself, so half is the stage and half is the seating at 2,000 seats.
Angela Mitchell: And then you had the logistics in terms of the performance space, and accommodating these huge yet delicate animals, the horses.
Normand Latourelle: Right. And all of that became the biggest traveling show in the world. We’re traveling with hundreds of people, and when it comes to the horse travel, we charter a Boeing 747 just for the horses, so they don’t spend 30 hours on the road and just spend 3 or 4 hours in the air instead. And it all works very smoothly.
My idea behind this was that I just wanted the best of the best in every field, from the moment the public enters, to the horses, to the entrance stands, to the seating and throughout the show. And I do think we have the best touring show in the world. But it’s big!
Angela Mitchell: Creatively, how does Cavalia differ from your past Cirque du Soleil productions and experiences?
Normand Latourelle: It is very different. But it’s interesting, as well, because it was very difficult to explain Cirque du Soleil was when we got started, back in the 1980s, so I’d be saying things like, ‘it’s circus but not circus,’ ‘it’s theater but not theater,’ I had to describe it in extremes.
So really, it’s the same thing with Cavalia in a brand new way, because it’s difficult to describe what Cavalia is. As a shortcut, I’ve usd the description that it’s ‘Cirque du Soleil with horses,’ but that's pretty false. It’s a show about horses but it's not a horse show. It is truly a different animal entirely.
