{"id":1890,"date":"2011-02-28T06:18:49","date_gmt":"2011-02-28T14:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/?p=1890"},"modified":"2011-02-28T09:47:32","modified_gmt":"2011-02-28T17:47:32","slug":"cavalia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/?p=1890","title":{"rendered":"Cavalia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late last week Sam emailed me asking if I wanted to go to “Cavalia” with her. \u00a0I had seen the billboards around town:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I assumed it was some sort of horse show. \u00a0I knew that Sam liked horses, although until this weekend I didn’t know just how much. \u00a0She likes them a lot.<\/p>\n

After she asked me I googled it<\/a> and found out it was a cirque du soleil show featuring horses. \u00a0I said I would go (I’ve never seen a cirque show, but secretly always wanted to see Love, the Beatles themed one).<\/p>\n

Saturday was unusually cold in Southern California. \u00a0The show was in Burbank, which is one of the coldest parts of the valley. \u00a0The location was next to the bridge that leads to the Burbank mall. \u00a0Like some crazy movie set, there, in an old parking lot, a bunch of white spires pulled huge tents up into the night sky. \u00a0Here is Sam standing in front of the entrance to the main tent:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Inside the main circus tent half of the space was devoted to rapidly ascending bleachers and the other half a very deep and very wide stage. \u00a0There were no photographs allowed, but Sam snapped this on her phone after the show was over:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Apparently Sam’s impression of the show and mine were complete opposites. \u00a0She would have preferred a show with 100% horses every minute, and I would have preferred a show with 0% horses and 100% acrobatics\/tricks. \u00a0I was lost a lot of the time. \u00a0There was an extraordinary amount of time devoted to just watching large groups of horses milling about or running around in circles. \u00a0The horses were also made to do a lot of “tricks” like walking in various formations. \u00a0Watching horses walk backwards in a row wasn’t impressive to me after seeing a human being do a back flip on top of a rolling 5 foot high ball \u00a0– but then I’m not the target audience here, this was a show for horse lovers. \u00a0The ticket prices were no less expensive than a regular cirque show (Sam found discounted tickets for under $100 each, but still quite expensive in my book), but there were 49 horses in the show, so if seeing horses was the goal, the audience got their money’s worth.<\/p>\n

I liked that the music was performed by a live band, which was made visible at times behind the stage, if only to prove they really were playing live. \u00a0The show also employed a lot of lighting and atmospheric effects like projecting images on falling water, snow machines, etc.<\/p>\n

Because the show involved so many animals there were a few times where miscues happened. \u00a0For instance, after an acrobat flipped on top of the rolling ball he stopped and waited for a horse to come out. \u00a0The horse came out to him but the horse and the man just waited for a good five minutes. \u00a0The man would slowly roll himself on the ball around, tap on the horses neck and wait for something. \u00a0Eventually the horse walked off the stage and he waved goodbye. \u00a0I wonder what was supposed to happen, perhaps a flip off of the ball onto the horse?<\/p>\n

It was\u00a0definitely\u00a0a unique experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Late last week Sam emailed me asking if I wanted to go to “Cavalia” with her. \u00a0I had seen the billboards around town: I assumed it was some sort of horse show. \u00a0I knew that Sam liked horses, although until this weekend I didn’t know just how much. \u00a0She likes them a lot. After she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1891,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1890\/revisions\/1891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}