Zingaro Opera Equestre

Opera Equestre A performance in Antwerp, Cultural City of the Year, 1993

Looking back on last night is like waking from a particularly real and immediate dream, and like a dream it evokes all the intense emotions, engaging the senses on the most complex levels, right from that first moment when we entered the tent, the sound of bells bouncing off the canvas walls, the intense sweet harsh aroma of the incense burning in the center of the ring, and there to welcome us in the little pool of amber light, a gaggle of geese…

Why geese, I later ask Bartabas, the founder and director of the Theatre Zingaro, what is their significance?

“No significance they are just geese. Just like Alfred Hitchcock had his little signatures in every film, I have the geese. They come from our first performance which was based on the Hungarian horsemen, and one of the jobs was to herd the geese. Now the geese are in all our productions, forever.”

This is no ordinary group; this is the famed Theatre Zingaro performing their Opera Equestre – a highlight of Antwerp 93, the recognition of the Belgian City’s status as cultural capital of Europe for the year.

Two dancers appear from opposite sides of the arena, each frantically, hypnotically syncopating the steps of their dance on the hand drums they carry; they are the meeting of the two horse cultures, the Berbers from Morocco and the Caucasians from Georgia, one of the themes that will dominate the performance.

The eight voice Caucasian male choir enters lead by a horseman, their dark winged cloaks sweep like bats wings to the sky, their song so serious and cadenced.

Now the women’s choir from the desert, lead by a camel, harsher, more discordant, strangely sweet, where the men are sombre, they are a riot of colour and sound.

One of their number is circling the centre of the arena, carrying a bundle, and you don’t need a translator to understand that she is singing a sad song of loss, in her achingly beautiful final stanza she unwraps the object, it is the skeleton of a horse’s head, and it is to this grisly memento that she sings her final bitter sweet refrain.

The lights dim for a moment, and when they come up a tall black suited man in a crew cut is in the centre with a wild black pony stallion on a lead line: their duet is as much about the horse controlling the movements of the man as the reverse, he winds the rein around his waist as he brings the stallion in close and spins as both of them break free.

“I do not like horses in circuses,” Bartabas tells us later, “They learn to do everything from memory, with my horses we are always changing what we do, I am never sure what they will do. If we work the horse at night in the performance, then during the day we will ride him – and the next day to the contrary, it is to change the mind and the physical demands. The structure of the performance is always so that you have moments where you can change and do something else.”

When the lights come up again, it is the turbaned black man who has accompanied the women’s choir standing in the center. They sing and flirt with him as they unwind his turban, ending with all eight walking in a circle around him, carrying the unwound head piece, the man standing the centre a human May Pole.

A huge shiny black Shire enters the ring, and the black horseman now leads a group of vaulters in what is just the most amazing exhibition of balletic athleticism as they try to outdo each other’s gymnastic feats on the broad back of the Shire. But one member of their cast is the star, taking off from impossible distances to land sitting lightly on the back of the horse. It makes any other exhibition of voltige that you have ever seen took like the stumbling blunders of amateurs. Through the performance the pace never lets up, but is never afraid to go from the lighting fast to the reverential and slow… scenes from a dream.

A young woman sits in the sand and sawdust of ring centre singing quietly to herself as a beautiful Palomino circles and dances wild and free around her.

A man sits cloaked in shadow, with a goose on his knee, and slowly his chair performs a turn on the haunches as the Caucasian choir spins its counterpoints.

A wonderful snow white Percheron, his curly mane over a metre long and shining like spun silk carries the lithe young woman in electric blue through a breath-taking display of bareback work.

A spotlight hits a lone violinist in the audience; her sad refrain swirls around Bartabas as he works a black Thoroughbred in hand.

There are two groups of riders, the desert horsemen on their little Arabs and the Georgian horsemen of the Great Plains, their horses larger but no less agile. Their trick riding is of the highest quality, fast and clean, extraordinarily exciting, and the horses they ride are all real horses – alive and superbly fit.

And they need to be fit as the groups are constantly disappearing from the tent at flat out gallops, only to reappear again at the same pace.

And Bartabas, the master, keeps reappearing with a series of wonderful horses, but none more wonderful than the Friesian stallion that gave the group its name, Zingaro.
Here is a liberty act with the emphasis on the liberty. Bartabas swaps roles with the black horse, it is he who leaps from the ring to ravish female members of the audience sitting in the front row, while Zingaro, who doubtless has seen it all before, sits centre stage, statuesque in his boredom.

Bartabas on a snow white Portuguese horse, dancing the morbid ballet of the picador, but this time his lance pierces only the skin of the arena.

And finally, Bartabas on his black Lusitano, in an exhibition of High School, that ends with the canter to the rear all the way across the twenty metre wide ring.

The audience roars its appreciation, and the arena is filled with horsemen, and singers taking their final bow. The tent goes black and in the soft glow of ring centre, there they are to farewell us… the geese.

What a dream. If this magical experience is not enough for one night there is more to come.

The Antwerp 93 press officer has been less than encouraging about the chances of an interview – Bartabas he says is not keen on the press, all he can suggest is that we make contact with Bartabas’ assistant, Daniel in the artist’s bar after the show. We line up an interview with Daniel, but he suddenly announces that the director would like to meet and talk with us. So over a bottle of light red wine, the campfire flickering in the background, Roz and I are privileged to meet with Bartabas himself, one of those rare creative talents who make their own paths, inventing destinies of their own making.

I had thought that the gypsy Theatre Zingaro would be some time honored Romany tribe, steeped in the tradition of the big top. The truth is far more wonderful. The group was founded nine years ago by Bartabas.

“At the beginning we had only seven horses. We always had the idea of working with the music, but the first show was different, it was a kind of Cabaret with the audience sitting and drinking and eating.”

None of us have a circus background,” says Bartabas, “It is much more interesting to do what we do because we wish to, not because we inherited it from our parents.”

And this show, with the meeting of the Moroccan and Georgian cultures?

“In all the performances we do there is not only one story, there are many things. The main line is the older roots of horse people – the opposition of the two cultures, the way they see the horse, and the way they see culture. The desert and the steppes – in the second one they eat horse, in the first one they don’t, for example.”

And did you learn your horse work from a teacher?

“I never had a master, neither in the horse or the theatre. At the beginning yes, for the basics. My opinion with the horse is that it is like any art, With painting you must first learn to do the colour…”

The canter to the rear, have you taught many horses this movement?

“No, in my knowledge he is the only horse in the world who can do that at the moment. Once the horse could canter in the place then the trouble was to teach him to go back without him coming up in the shoulders. So I looked at the photos of James Fillis in canter to the rear, and the photo was not nice, he was tipped forward in his seat, but then I saw that you must lighten the seat – it was not good but I could see how to do it. I think Fillis was the first one to do canter to the rear. The problem is to keep the tempo, to keep the jump, but this horse, I didn’t start to do it because I wanted to do it. I started working the horse and began to see that he was in very good equilibrium, so I would try to do it. I didn’t buy the horse thinking I am going to do that movement.”

“I never do that, never buy a horse to do something particular. I buy a horse, then work with the horse. I see what they can do. I have sixteen different breeds of horse in this performance. For the people who don’t know horses this is very interesting. For me, the show is not for people who ride horses; people who like horses like the show, but people who don’t know anything of horses, must like it too. It is important to have horses of a very different character and appearance.”

You don’t ride Thoroughbred horses?

“Yes, I like them a lot, for me they are more interesting. I have one in the performance, the one who works in the hand – he was bred in Spain but he is a Thoroughbred horse. I like the Thoroughbred better than the Portuguese horses – the Portuguese horses are easier to work with, but they don’t have the rapidity of the response. How the Portuguese horses go is for me very brittle – I like the grace you only get with the Thoroughbred. You can teach a horse all the movements, but there is something more… the moment you are looking for, but you can’t teach that. The problem with the Thoroughbred is that they are very difficult to work with in a confined space…”

And the gypsy component that emerges is a gypsy state of mind rather than any ethnic heritage:

“It is our way of life, to live in a caravan, we want to live with the horse.”

In Paris the French Minister of Culture, Jack Lang had a special theatre created for the Zingaro group, built to Bartabas’ specifications, and all of wood, here is a perfect setting like a chapel for the regular performances of the group. The audience enters over the horse’s stalls – and the members of the group live in caravans around the theatre.

Bartabas is justifiably proud of the fact that Zingaro, the horse, is still so full of fun even though he is the ‘founder’ of the group.

“When I bought him he was twelve months old, and I have had him for ten years now, and he is still playing. He is very special, he is like a partner, I never know what we will be doing, but we know each other so well. He had just left his mother when I bought him, so he knows only me all his life.”

“I have an older horse, I stopped him performing last month, he was twenty six years old! My way to buy a horse is very special. It is like people, I don’t know the word in English, in French it is charpont. So you can have a horse with a defect, sometimes I will buy a horse even though the veterinaries have said to me, ‘don’t buy this horse, he has this problem’. And I say, ‘I don’t care, if he has a problem we will fix it. I buy the horse because there is something I like. It can be the way they look, the way they move… after I find the way to work with them.”

“What can the horse do that is interesting – is it to be free, is it to be ridden? This way of working with a horse is more interesting because you have to adapt to the horse rather than the other way round. Many of the horses I buy are not very expensive, no one wants them…”

“If you look at the lives of the great masters like l’Hotte, the pleasure they came to at the end of their lives was not to work with a horse and do everything, but to find a horse that no-one wanted and to work not perfectly, but to bring the horse to a good level. That is the key for me. The thing is to find the horse and develop what is good, that is not only interesting in the result, but in how you work.”

“The idea is not to find the perfect horse because the perfect horse does not exist. You do the best you can with every horse.”

“It is the same with the people. Now in Europe everybody wants to work with Zingaro, but I don’t bring someone in to do a particular thing. For me it is more important that the person is good in the ambience – it is no good to have someone who is very good on the horse and not good in the life. It is more important that they should have a good spirit.”

Was it hard to teach the horse to do the canter to the rear?

“When we first started to do it, I did not do it very often because it is very difficult for the horse, but he always did it very well. He is exceptional, not just because he did it, but because he does it so often and so well. Perhaps it is because it is the last thing he does…”

Have you ever had a horse that does the three legged canter?

“No, I’m thinking about it. I have eight horses in Paris which I am preparing for next season, I will see if there is one who can do it. But I am preparing movements that have never been done before… It is like in dance, it is good to have the basis. People in modern dance have a preparation in the classics, and then they do their own movements – I think we will be able to do this with the horses, always working with the basic movements well, then to find things that have never been done. Why should all the movements the horse can do have stopped 200 years ago? Even in Vienna they are doing things the same as they did 200 years ago. It is good that it exists, it is like a conservatorium, but I think there are more things to do…”

Do you like any of the Olympic horses, Rembrandt for example?

“Of course I like him, but I don’t like the way they are working. Sometimes I ride one of these ‘important’ horses, and every time I think there is two hundred kilos in my hand. I don’t like that. It is very complicated when you are speaking of ‘lightness’ because it depends what you call lightness.”

“It is different for each person, it is difficult to learn from the books. When you read the books it is important to remember in what period the book was written, and what sort of horse the master was riding, and what was the fashion of the time.”

“For me there is no method to work a horse. Something that is right for one horse is not right for the other one. There is a spirit of how you work a horse, but no method which says one day you do this, one day you do that. If that was true it would be very simple to ride a horse, and it is not.”