Bartabas at Versailles

It was back in 1993 that I first heard about Bartabas and the Theatre Zingaro. One of those serendipity sequences that usually lead to the best surprises. Antwerp had been declared the European City of Culture, and part of the program featured the Theatre Zingaro in a performance of Opera Ecuestre. I immediately wrote to the organizers requesting an interview with Bartabas, the director of this performance.

His first show – a mad gypsy circus cabaret with horses – I’d seen on video. The live performance in Antwerp was the beginning of Zingaro’s more serious work. We’ve managed to see all of the Zingaro performances since then – Chimere, Eclipse and Triptych, and each time, enjoyed our interviews with Bartabas, although each time it has been somewhat stressful to actually get the guy sitting down in front of a recording device.

Last year, we were contacted by Zingaro, telling us of Bartabas’ latest venture, a school of equestrian theatrical art to be established in the fabulous Great Stables of the Palace of Versailles.

So there we were, in the riding hall of the great Sun King, Louis XIV, watching one of the final rehearsals before the grand opening. And this time, to our total surprise, Bartabas was quick to agree to an interview…

The School at Versailles carries on from Bartabas’ work with Zingaro:
“With Zingaro we created something that never existed before – we have horses, dance, theatre, but when I compare with my friends who are in theatre or choreographers, when they have an audition they have hundreds of dancers and actors. For twenty years I have had to prepare people for Zingaro. We have to have people with a good equestrian feeling, then we had to teach them dance, to dance with horses.”
“So the main idea of this Academy, is to mix horse work – three quarters of the work – and the other quarter is to study the arts – dance, singing, artistic fencing, drawing. But it is not like a television star academy; it is not to quickly make artists for the theatre. In my opinion, this artistic study is to help make the rider better in riding. For me, riding is artistic. It is an art so you have to develop feeling. You can learn technique but after a time it is a question of feeling and this you can help with the arts.”
“Singing makes you confident, you discover that with your voice you are able to produce sound and it makes you very confident in yourself. When you ride a horse, you want the horse to be confident in you and be confident in yourself.”

“Dance is self evident, we always talk about how to make a horse we make him flexible but we never speak about the rider – the human – to experiment on your body is very important. Then you understand more about the horse; the horse is not a machine. The horse can have a bad night, so he is not the same the next day as he was yesterday. You can try and explain this, but when you realise it with your body, that is different.”

“Artistic fencing is to learn to listen to the other person, it is not like competition fencing, the two of you make choreography – it develops your reflexes, and reflexes are very important on a horse. The horse has quicker reflexes than a human, so you have to develop that.”

“This school is not to produce a robot, the ideal artist on the horse, it is to make you better on the horse – then I see if I can use these skills. I don’t say, in two years you must sing on a horse, not at all, but maybe, if I see after two years it is very good, that might give an idea for the performance.”

“This mix is not original, in every academy of dance, you have lessons in theatre, or the martial arts or singing. But this has never been done with horses. People with horses are more thought of as sportsmen but not as artists. We have to develop this sensibility and they will be better on the horse. We must never forget that historically at the Palace of Versailles in the time of Louis XIV, in the period of de la Géurinière, it was a period where the art of riding in France was very highly developed but why? First because there was a king who decided to have horses, not for hunting but for pleasure, for the carousels, for art, and this older school of riding was open to the nobility. And for the nobility, they made riding, like singing, like dancing, so they had that artistic background. Never forget that Louis XIV was a very good dancer, if he was not king he could have been a professional dancer. This high level of equitation was made possible by people who had an artistic vision of riding.”

The project to re-open the Stables at Versailles has apparently been under consideration, with the move spearheaded by Michel Henriquet, who sees himself as the ultimate custodian of the French system of equitation. One can only imagine the ripples in French equestrian circles when the decision was made to go ahead and re-open the Stables, but not in the custody of the antiquarian riding master, but under the tutelage of a steeplechase jockey turned theatre performer in Paris…

” I am not interested in making an historical re-creation of the stables in the time of Louis XIV, but in fact, I am nearer to the tradition, inside. I don’t want to make people with the costume of the time of Louis XIV, but the spirit of the work is nearer to what it was. This is not a museum. If they said to me, Bartabas we want you to come here but we want you to make an historic zoo, I would have refused to come. If I made a recreation only with the costume, it is nothing to do with the spirit of this place.”

The Academy is designed to support itself by putting on performances to the thousands of visitors who have made the Chateau of Versailles one of the world’s great tourist destinations:

“Here we will make a short performance of half an hour, not like Zingaro, but the idea is to build up a repertory. After ten years, there will be ten performances, and each rider will have to be able to make all ten performances.”

“In the past for us it has impossible to make again each performance of Zingaro, but here the horses are all the same colour, we can prepare the young horses to take the place of the older horses.”

“The other idea of the academy is that all the work will be public. In the morning from 9 to 1, the students will work the horses, every day except Monday, and it is open to the public, hour by hour they will work the horses and make little performances, and for these sort of performances we will use the Baroque music of Versailles.”

“That is very important for the riders, to learn to prepare the horse with people watching. You’ve got to be concentrated on your horse but aware that there are people watching you. That will also make the money for the school. All the students are paid, not a lot, but a minimum. That means that the students will not have to be rich. They will live here and they will be paid.”

“That is for two reasons. First to make them responsible, before everything it is a school of life. I am an autodidact. My conception of the school is that there is a not a moment in life where you are learning something, and then another moment of your life when you make money with your knowledge. For me you have to be learning all your life. I am still learning, the more I learn on the horse, the less I know. Things that I would do fifteen years ago, I would not do now because I know more, the more you learn the less you know. You have to give to receive, this school is not something you come to and say, okay, I am here to receive – no, you have to give and then you will receive.”

“Years ago, if you wanted to learn painting from a great painter, first you learn to mix the paint, then to prepare the canvas, finally you can paint. But you have to watch to learn. That’s why they are paid. Their work in the morning will earn the money for the Academy, and that makes them responsible. The students have to produce something.”

“The second reason is that horses are often to do with money. So when I made auditions all over the world, I knew I would have an American girl, 20-22, who rides quite well because her parents bought her an expensive horse – and the poor student who had to work to ride, might have the talent but cannot stay here two years without money because here they have to work from the morning to the evening. It is not like university, when they can work when they are not in class, here it is full time.”

“The organisation here is that we have ten student riders, and three riders who are part of the company, who have permanency, two of them are from Zingaro, and one other, and those three are here for as long as they want. With the students they are here for two years, and after two years, I pick five of them to stay on as teachers. So I will have eight permanent riders, they are members of the company. Then I will take eight students, so I will have eight members of the company, and eight new students, so each student will be with one member of the company and they will share their horses. That is for me very important because I don’t like the idea of a school where you receive but you are alone. Horse people are not used to doing that, each is on his own doing his own thing. Here each rider will have two horses, one young and one old, but in fact they are four horses for two persons. They share the two old ones and the two young ones. They must discuss, today he was better after you rode him, what did you do? The real result will not come for two or three years when the permanent members can share horses with the pupils, that is very important.”

“And they will always be the white horses because I think it is good for the image. The other thing I wanted was that the pupils were mainly girls, and that was like a provocation, but it is also a reality because thirty years ago, 75% all the professionals involved with horses were men. Now we have 85% of women – it’s incredible, in one generation how much it has changed. Why, I don’t know. I am not a sociologist. Once horses were for transport or war and it was for men, but then it was for prestige, the image, to ride a horse made you more powerful, and still it was men – but this is finished now. Men leave the horses for the women. If I want to be powerful I buy a big car or a plane, but not a horse.”

“So that means that men or women who work with horses now, they look for something different, they don’t ride a horse for social standing but because they want to interact with an animal. So riding will change a lot in the years to come because now people ride because they want contact with the animal, and that is mainly women. And never forget it is the only Olympic sport where the men and the women compete together – in dressage the ten top riders are all women. Even in racing, the trainers now prefer women because they are more patient. I see it with Zingaro where it is half men, half women, and the men they make performances with horses and the women, they like the evolution of the horse in the performance, it is quite different. With one you can say they use the horse for the performance, and the other is more interested in the horse and how it develops. You have to respect that it is mostly women who participate with horses.”

To find the first group of students, Bartabas searched the world:

“We sent out to all the horse magazines, news about the Academy last May and did the auditions in August, about 120 answered, and I asked for videos from thirty and then chose ten. The applicants came from very different origins, some from sport, many wrote and said I dance and I sing and I ride a horse and I didn’t select these ones. I prefer people who make horse work only because these people will be better when they make music and dance. I am not interested in a good dancer who can also ride a horse…”

And while Bartabas has been very busy with his new project at Versailles, the good news is that Theatre Zingaro will continue:

“Of course we are starting the rehearsals right now for a new performance. The premier will be in Moscow, with Tibetan monks. I was surprised they accepted to join me because they are very religious, it will be very interesting. There will be more horses in the next performance, about 30 horses. Some horses from Argentina… and I will be more in the show.”

In the last performance, Triptych you were hardly in the performance, just at the end?

“Yes but now I have four horses. One full blood that I think will be very good. One Lusitano horse, very good. We will also have Quarter horses in the performance for the first time.”

Will you ride in the performances at Versailles?

“Only for the opening but after that no. Maybe in the future we can have a special performance but the Academy is the Academy not Zingaro.”

Is it hard with both the Academy and Zingaro?

“It is now hard to get them both started, but once the Academy is going I will come here once or twice a week. No more. I reserve a period, all over January to February 15, the Academy will be closed to the public and I will come every day to work on the new performance because at that time of the year we are always in Paris with Zingaro, and I can come every day. We have ten god fathers, Nelson Pessoa, some of the famous riders of the Cadre Noir… ten who will come two or three times a year to help.”

From the States to Versailles…
Dana Ishii from Hawaii is at nineteen, the youngest student at the Academy, and comes from a typically American equestrian background:

“I was in college last year in Oregon, and I was on a horseback riding team and because we were a national team. We received an email at the college, it was very short, about one paragraph long, saying a new school was opening up in Paris, and they were looking for dressage riders. Call this number. I called and it was Nathalie, and she sent me the application.”

“I hadn’t heard of Zingaro or Bartabas or Versailles or anything like that. I just thought that the opportunity to go live in Paris would be a nice one, and to ride horses and be paid for it would be great. So I just followed up on it, sent in my application. The application got lost in the mail and I wasn’t able to make it to Paris for the interview, but Bartabas made arrangements for me to audition in California when the Triptych show was there.”

So you finally got to see Zingaro – what did you think of that?

“It was amazing. I didn’t know what to expect. I knew there was some voltage in it, but I had no idea. After that I had some idea. I knew this wasn’t going to be as large as Zingaro but it would be interesting at least.”

“At home I’d ridden western, jumping, dressage – just about everything. I’ve been involved in Pony Club, at College I was competing as well.”

Is this very different, what Bartabas teaches?

“No, it is just more dressage but geared a little more to performing in front of the public. I think Bartabas is really amazing. I admire the way he works with horses, I respect him. He is so gentle with them, he has a good eye and a good feel for the horse and what it can do. I’ve never seen him force a horse to do anything – he doesn’t have a mean streak in him, he just looks like one of those scarey guys who force the horses. The way that he just touches the horses, he is very kind and very understanding of what they can offer.

Did you speak French before you came here?

“No, I still don’t really but I understand a bit more now. Michaela from Finland speaks very good English and she also speaks some French so she translates for me. A couple of the girls here speak English as well as French – we all get along very well. I think that is part of the reason we were chosen. I think Bartabas has a good eye for people as well as horses and chose us because we would get along together. A lot of dressage riders can have an attitude, but none of the riders here have that ‘I’m better than everyone else attitude’, it makes it easy, everyone is fun to work with.”

Are you getting nervous, the opening is only a couple of days away?

“For us I think we have it the easiest. The pressure is on everyone else’s shoulders and we just have to do whatever they tell us to do. It’s getting maybe a little bit stressful in that we are working late hours, and it is cold… but we’ll be excited once it is over, and we can really start our work.”

You think you will last your two years at Versailles?

“I think we are going to be so busy we won’t notice time. I’ve been here two months now, and we are busy all the time so it goes fast.”

After two years?

“There is the possibility to stay on here, or I’ll go home to Hawaii…”

Caption: Costumes designed by the Belgian designer, Dries van Noten, saddles by Hermes, and the lights by Jean Lautrey using Murano glass from Venice