Equine gifts from the gods: The A.V. Club visits The Dancing Horses Theater
Horses imbued with the "magic of the dance" get up-close and personal.
There's a section of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series in which various characters get stranded in "soft places," or intersections of dreams and reality. These "soft places" are hazy amalgams of different times and cultures colliding and confounding those lost within them. The A.V. Club may have found one such place right here in southern Wisconsin. It's in Delavan, off of State Road 50.
The 300-seat Dancing Horses Theatre offers crowds a chance to watch a cast of flamboyantly costumed horses and mostly female trainers performing choreographed "dance" routines with magical overtones. The "dances" are essentially elaborate displays of dressage, which is, at its most basic, about making horses do step tricks (and an Olympic sport, seriously). In the show's "Harley" routine, for example, a miniature horse in leather and studs plays faux-obstinate with a similarly dressed trainer while "Bad To The Bone" plays over the speakers. The trainer "tries" to push the misbehaving horse to do what she says.
The segments usually aren't quite so rough-and-tumble in tone: In "Baskin's Legacy," a dismounted trainer directs five horses (offspring of the late and almighty Baskin Robbins, whom we'll discuss below) to parade in unison, getting really close to the audience via a well-placed set of wooded steps placed in front of the front-row seats. Other routines include "Spanish Fantasia," "Fire Horse," and "The Indian Spirit," and they all come complete with ridiculous themed costumes (including a leggy Indian getup) for both horses and trainers.
Dana Montana, the proprietor of The Dancing Horses Theater (which also offers pre-show lunches and dinners, if you can believe it), wants to get people thoroughly immersed in this dream world. Consider some of the inspirational quotes that get thrown out during the several horse shows Montana puts on each week: "Never underestimate a child's dream"; "Dreams have the power to transcend the imagination" (don't dreams come from the imagination?); and "Horses are in the dreams... of children taking them on fantastical journeys... but... do you believe?" After seeing The Dancing Horses perform 15 different themed and costumed set pieces, including a choreographed light-and-water-fountain show, I began to believe that "soft places" might indeed be a real phenomenon.
Montana has fashioned a small theme park out of the enclosed dirt-floor theater and its surroundings, including an outdoor and indoor petting zoo and a bird show. A photo of a Montana's trained tropical bird named Villar with Mario Lopez and Jay Leno (shown on a projection screen during the show's intro) is just a hint of the Vegas-worthy (or at least Wisconsin Dells-worthy) production to come. The horse show itself involves intros to Montana's background (well, not the parts about her being a Playboy bunny, burlesque dancer, and nightclub entrepreneur); inspirational phrases narrated in a disturbingly soothing monotone voice and set to cheesy world music; and then the actual dancing pieces, also often set to world music or Celine Dion (or her ilk).
As we mentioned above, a central routine lauds Montana's deceased favorite horse, Baskin Robbins, whose descendants apparently were "all born with the magic of the dance." Did we say "favorite"? Well, maybe "most deified" is more appropriate: Baskin Robbins is called "a creature of indescribable beauty... undeniably a gift from the gods."
Add to that some horses in light-up blue and red armor that I swear look like they were cut from the motorcycle race in the movie Tron, and a finale combining all the different themes (including Native American and Spanish horse-garb) that feels like an equine Village People parody, and you'll wonder if it was all a fever dream.
_jpg_50x50_crop_q85.jpg)
