originally published on nwasianweekly.com
July 3, 2004

BACK TO ANN-MARIE STILLION: WRITING

Photo by Ann-Marie Stillion

Dopka’s horse, Pico, is the only Appaloosa in the 33-horse entourage. The riders in “Cavalia” call their horses
“four-legged artists.”

Riding like the eastern wind

By Ann-Marie Stillion
Northwest Asian Weekly

Handsome and broad-shouldered, Dosbergen “Dopka” Bektursunovich’s smile either seeps out slowly across his face or bursts like an exploding flashbulb.

When he talks about going home for a break from his new gig with the touring show “Cavalia,” there’s the quiet grin. He’s figured out that he can find pretty good Kyrgyzstani food in Los Angeles and San Francisco, but so far hasn’t found it in Seattle, he says, shaking his head.

On his days off he likes to go clubbing, and he has already visited Club Medusa in downtown Seattle. But his daily routine usually involves rehearsing, getting ready to perform, performing and relaxing in the giant white tents pitched at the edge of Interstate 405 in Renton.

If you ask him if he plans to use the law degree he acquired, he slaps the air and pitches back on his chair, roaring, “Maybe when I am 50 or 60 years old. I am having too much fun.” You know instantly he’s a parent’s worst nightmare, and probably many a young woman’s dream.

Dopka is a trick rider from the city of Osh, the second largest in the central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan. There, his father is a labor organizer and his mother a trader in international goods. The oldest of five, he has two brothers and two sisters. One younger brother has followed him into the world of trick riding.

In 1997, his uncle telephoned from America to invite him to join the Kambarov Riders, which was traveling throughout the United States with the Ringling Bros. circus. Dopka had studied riding with his uncle for seven years as a private student. That and two kickboxing championships in his home country made him the perfect solution to his uncle’s flagging ranks. He says the phone call was “an opportunity.”

Dopka stayed with Ringling Bros. for two years and then began to find work with other circuses riding “Russian-style” — doing flips and jumps from atop a horse that is slowly circling a small ring. His work caught the eye of other performers in the world of traveling circuses.

Last December, when Dopka performed in Montreal, the renowned equestrian directors Frederic Pignon and Magali Delgado saw his performance in “Super Cirque” and asked him to join their newly minted “Cavalia: A Magical Encounter Between Horse and Man,” which began its tour last fall.

“Cavalia,” led by Norman Latourelle, an early founder of “Cirque du Soleil,” is a new kind of show that combines the best horses, acrobats, musicians, dancers and artists to create an unusual experience for audiences as well as the performers. It is billed as a kinder, gentler world for the horses, if not always for the riders.

Artist, horseman and “horse whisperer” Pignon smiles knowingly when he describes Dopka’s first attempts to ride with his new company.

The first thing the Kyrgyzstani rider had to learn was to gallop his Appaloosa named Pico in a straight line at top speed across the specially crafted 160-foot stage, rather than slowly circling while the horse is led by another.

Pignon recalls: “The challenge for Dopka was to learn to perform tricks, not only in a straight line but also to really ride the horse at the same time, not just let the horse follow the lunge. In the beginning he fell down many times, but he would just get up and try again. He is very brave and courageous.”

While much of “Cavalia” is so serenely beautiful you begin to wonder if heaven can be very far away, Dopka’s trick riding is what show people call “a crowd pleaser.”

Horses race as fast as they can while their riders leap across the saddles, kicking from side to side. Riders lean low to the ground, their heads almost dragging, and even stand straight up on the horses, whooping at the top of their lungs. It is all-American-central-Asian-nomad-
cowboy gone wild, and the crowd is beside itself by the time the ponies disappear behind the tent flaps for the last time.

The moves require split-second timing, along with a taste for danger. Producer Latourelle says that Dopka is also training to be a Roman rider, in which the performer balances on two swiftly moving horses running side by side.

Dopka shrugs, “No, it’s not dangerous if you know what you are doing. It might be for someone else.” He looks around at no one in particular, and then disappears to paint his face, tie on his colorful costume and saddle up Pico for the night’s performance.