He’s one of the most famous horsemen in all of France, as renowned for his training ability as he is for his performance art. A show by Bartabas fuses music, dancing, and acting in equal parts with impressive displays of horsemanship, including everything from advanced dressage and vaulting, to reining and liberty work.

Born in a middle-class Parisian suburb as Clement Marty, Bartabas was an artistic spirit from the start. As a teenager, he traveled around performing at small festival events with his ragtag group of friends, dogs, and horses. By 1985, however, he was making his name as a legitimate performance artist, establishing the Theatre Equestre Zingaro group, named for Zingaro (“Gypsy”), his favorite Friesan stallion.

Over the years, the Zingaro troop has performed for thousands of spectators from around the world; from New York and London to Istanbul and Hong Kong. Bartabas makes his home at a wooden big top at Aubervilliers, northeast of Paris, where his “caravan” includes 37 horses—a menagerie of breeds made up of everything from shetland ponies to Arabian stallions.

In 2003, Bartabas also founded the Académie Equestre de Versailles, an “equestrian ballet” training center not unlike Vienna’s Spanish Riding School. Based at the Chateau of Versailles’s centuries-old Royal Stables in Paris, the school often supplies Bartabas’s large touring show with its performer graduates.

(flickr.com/patrick janicek)

(flickr.com/patrick janicek)

As a contemporary of the Canadian equestrian shows Cavalia and Odysseo, Zingaro has drawn frequent comparisons, though it predates both of them. In truth, Bartabas’s performance roots are closer to a more historic tradition in theater, the 19th-century hippodrama, or “horse drama.”

Hippodrama was first developed in England by Philip Astley, an amphitheater and circus owner who, by order of the Licencing Act of 1737, was not among the three venues in London (Covent Garden, Drury Lane, and the summer theater at Haymarket) allowed to perform “legitimate theater” within its walls. Astley, who had aspirations of doing just that, had a license to stage “public dancing and music” at his amphitheater, which must have vexed him considerably. Music and dancing is all well and good if you’re hosting a sorority party, but not so great if your aim is artistic gravitas.

Undaunted, the theater owner decided to search for a loophole. As a circus operator, Astley routinely used horses in his performances and realized the law would allow him to stage dramas, too, just so long as they were done on horseback—a strange caveat that fell within the bounds of his entertainment license. And so, hippodrama was born. Astley stuck to the popular dramas of the day, using horses as his main actors. His amphitheater contained both a traditional stage and a dirt floor riding arena, separated by an orchestra pit. The Astley Royal Amphitheatre’s first hippodrama production took place in London in 1803, the same year hippodrama premiered across the channel at Paris’s Cirque Olympique, on a stage so large it could reportedly hold up to 36 horses.

An original theater poster for a hippodrama performed at Astley's Ampitheater in London (Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons).

An original theater poster for a hippodrama at Astley’s Royal Amphitheatre in London (Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons).

During the first decade of the 19th century, hippodrama continued to grow in popularity. In 1810, Astley had the last laugh when, thanks to the financial success of his play, The Blood Red Knight, “legitimate” theaters including Covent Garden and Drury Lane also began to stage hippodramas alongside their more traditional dramatic offerings. By the mid-19th-century, hippodrama had spread as far as North America and Australia, and plays including William Shakespeare’s Richard III and Don Quixote had been adapted for the equestrian stage. Though the popularity of hippodrama began to decline during the turn of the century, more recent years have proven fertile ground for a resurgence.

In 2009, a one-of-a-kind hippodrama production of Ben Hur was staged in London, a production so epic it included a cast of 400 people and 100 animals, including 32 horses.

Scenes from the 2009 production of "Ben Hur", at London's O2 Arena (flickr.com/Christine McIntosh).

Scenes from the 2009 production of “Ben Hur”, at London’s O2 Arena. (flickr.com/Christine McIntosh)

And then there is Bartabas’s Zingaro. Tapping into the tradition of hippodrama, Bartabas continues to use horses—his co-actors—to do more than simple circus tricks. Last year, his show entitled On Acheve Bien les Anges – Elegies (They Shoot Angels – Elegies), was dedicated to his closest friend, the cartoonist Cabu, who was killed during the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris of January 2015.

Bartabas told Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore of BBC News that the loss changed the way he stages Zingaro’s performances. Once renowned for their provocativeness, Bartabas says his shows are now meant as a foil for the aggression seen in so many aspects of modern life. Seeking not only to be softer and more tender, Bartabas hopes his art will “…define the poetry of things.”

You can read the BBC News’s full story on Bartabas here, or watch a 1984 performance by the artist featuring his beloved stallion, Zingaro, below.