Couple of weeks back, the husband asked out of the blue if I wanted to catch Cavalia. If it’s a West End show or Broadway musical, he needn’t had to ask because I’d definitely be game for it. But I wasn’t absolutely sure about Cavalia as I didn’t think equestrian arts and acrobatics were my cup of tea plus I’d never been very interested in horses too. I thought if the husband wanted company, I was more than willing to come along. Boy, I was glad I did because it was a one-of-a-kind experience. Watching the horses galloping away on stage with performers doing all kinds of stunts was downright impressive. I never knew horses could be that talented and trainable!
Note: This blog post contains spoilers! Proceed at your own risk, lol.
Cavalia was presented under its signature White Theatre Tent (which was also the world’s largest touring tent) on Bayfront Avenue, just next to the Sands Expo & Convention Centre. We came for the matinee performance that started at 2pm on Saturday.
After passing through the admission entrance, we saw Cavalia’s merchandise and souvenirs on sale in the same tentage.
We saw many families buying the horse stuffies in assorted colours for the kids. Cute! I was almost tempted, lol.
There were also food & beverage kiosks selling popcorn, nachos, quick bites, ice cream, beer and drinks.
We selected seats on the second last row in the middle section (facing centre stage) of the theatre tent so we had to climb up these slightly rickety, makeshift stairs to get to the top.
At first we thought we might be too far behind but surprisingly, we weren’t and we had a pretty good view of the entire stage. We sat at Row U, Seats 41 & 42. The only gripe was that the height between the rows wasn’t high enough so if someone tall or with ‘big hairdo’ (yes, the lady in front of me had huge permed hair!) sat in front of you, stage view would be obstructed. And then throughout the performance, heads would be moving left and right (like being in a Bollywood movie) constantly so to catch a better glimpse, lol. Geez. Thank goodness, there were empty seats on the last row and we moved to the back so we could get an unblocked view, woohoo!
At the beginning, while we were waiting for the show to start, we were entertained with a series of informative Q&As (or rather, multiple choice questions) through slides on screen.
Anyway, photography or videography wasn’t allowed during the performance. I was also too engrossed with the show to sneak more shots to share on here so I’ll just briefly mention some of the highlights.
The stage was a sand terrain with an ever-changing backdrop that brought us to various parts of the world (think terracotta army, Grand Canyon, desert, etc). When the horses came galloping, we were just enthralled by these creatures. The husband even exclaimed, “Look at their muscles!” Lol. And yes, the horses were just beautiful. Tall, strong, healthy-looking with smooth, shiny mane.
A woman played around with lassos not in a cowgirl way but with slick, graceful dance moves.
A man balanced himself on a gigantic ball. He made it look so easy to climb up and stand on the ball itself.
Two women were suspended in mid-air, dancing and flying with the tunes of the music.
There were plenty of ground acrobatics, human stacking and jolly dances too. We were amused by the group of men who kept doing the same ‘signature move’, lol (go watch and find out!).
Performers balanced on not one but two horses (1 foot on each horse) as the horses galloped fast and furious. One woman even took rein of 6 horses at once and had them jumped over hurdles.
And when we went into a 30-minute interval, I took this shot. That was sand on the forestage.
The second half of the performance was nothing short of spectacular. Ladies on trapezes, dancing horses (really cute to see them grooving to the music!), more stunts & tricks on running horses, live singing, live music and dances. Also, some funny characters injected humour to make the audience laugh.
The most amazing part was how quickly they filled the forestage with water (see picture below) and how real the environment suddenly became. When the horses galloped by, the ripples and the splashes simply made us forget we were actually looking at a man-made stage.
Overall, we felt we could be more engaged if there was more of a story plot to follow through but it was very much like a circus act with multiple elements coming together but didn’t quite flow seamlessly to the end and somehow I thought the ending wasn’t impactful enough too so we had this “that’s it?” kind of reaction when it ended. Despite that, Cavalia was still a very entertaining show with some mind-blowing moments that really wowed us. It was clearly proven because the normally quiet husband was extremely talkative (with lots of comments and cheers coming from him) throughout the show, lol. And also, we absolutely fell in love with the lovely horses. I wouldn’t mind meeting these beautiful creatures!
Oh, and before I end this off, I’d strongly recommend you to watch an evening performance instead of the matinee because it was really warm and stuffy inside the tent as though there wasn’t any aircon. People were just fanning themselves with the tickets. Being on the last row, we could just raise our hands and touch the canvas on top of us which felt really hot being under the sun for so long so you could imagine the warmth inside the tent too which wasn’t very nice. But if you’ve already bought your matinee tickets, please bring a portable fan just in case!
Matinee and evening performances are scheduled through 14 September. Tickets are available at Cavalia’s website or via SISTIC. Stan Chart card holders, you can get 10% off!
Enjoy!