Long Beach Opera's THE HORSE Comes to Rancho Los Cerritos in East Long Beach

Choreographer and dancer Chris Emile, last seen at Long Beach Opera creating the innovative choreography for LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES (2021), returns to live performance with THE HORSE, an intimate new work that combines Emile's exceptional movement direction with operatic ritual.

Audiences are invited to partake in this meditative and captivating experience driven forward by a raucous, irreverent original score and soundscape by Cody Perkins and astonishing vocals by cross-genre performer Alexis Vaughn.

Performances are March 4, 5, 11 and 12 at 7:30 PM at Rancho Los Cerritos, 4600 Virginia Rd., Long Beach, CA 90807; tickets and information are at longbeachopera.org. Performances are held outdoors in the Rancho's historic backyard.

THE HORSE evokes the supernatural experience of spiritual possession through improvisational performance, structural installation, and video. In Vodun tradition, a "horse" describes a person who has been possessed and is being "ridden" by a possessing deity. In combining somatic practice with theology and research into the origins of ballet, Emile reassesses how traditional balletic training regards the role of the performer/dancer. The resulting work embodies ancestral knowledge, reverence for African religions, and the human-divine connection while reclaiming the relationship between body and spirit as all are invited to witness and experience this shared catharsis.

Prior to the performance, there will be the opportunity to explore an accompanying installation erected beside the performance space on the grounds of the historic Rancho Los Cerritos. The installation, a sanctuary of sorts, will feature a documentary short about Emile's research and time creating THE HORSE as well as an assemblage of the various found and collected materials which inspired it and an altar where visitors are invited to contribute their own offerings to loved ones past.

Kathleen MacKay wrote in Artillery Magazine about the original iteration of THE HORSE presented by Los Angeles Nomadic Division, "The piece references ancestral knowledge and grief. Ancestors known, loved and gone, but still carried in the body. The piece begins with the sound of water. A trio of drummers and vocalist shrouded in white veils step onto the performance area followed by Emile veiled and clothed in roughly tied on white fabric reminiscent of a rag doll or a religious pilgrim."

MacKay continued, "As the performance continues the trancelike music deepens and whips up, along with the drummers and the haunted keening from the vocalist. A transcendent fusion of sound, beat, voice, noise, movement, light and shadow. Emile falls to the earth, rubs in the dirt. He contorts, covers his mouth, falls back. His tongue escapes the veil. We are witness to possession."

LBO's General Director Jennifer Rivera, who was in the audience for the original performances of THE HORSE commented, "The Horse combines a tour de force performance of operatic proportions from a gifted performer / choreographer with an incredibly intimate self-portrait created through music and dance that feels itself like a spiritual journey. The sound world of Cody Perkins envelops the audience as they sit only feet away from Chris Emile's powerful choreographic storytelling."

Rivera continued, "For LBO this presentation represents the range of what we feel is on the cutting edge of opera; from large scale, proscenium opera such as our currently running The Romance of the Rose, to much more intimate presentations where proximity changes the audience experience. The common thread between the two is LBO's desire to present operatic storytelling from the unique perspectives of these individual creators."

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