GIDDY UP: None of the Jim Pattison Group’s 23 auto dealerships offer vehicles powered by only 65 horses. But that’s plenty for the Pattison-sponsored Cavalia Odysseo circus running in False Creek’s “big top” tent to March 5. And a run it is, as 12 breeds of stallion and gelding walk, trot, canter and gallop around the tented and sometimes-flooded ring. Meanwhile, a singer reflects Cavalia founder Normand Latourelle’s sentiments with: “The universe is an illusion, infinite poetry, where dreams in a circle caress the thoughts and the world.” Oddly, the show’s most moving moment has horses and riders lie seemingly asleep together as dawn lightens desert dunes on a huge video backdrop. They’re soon moving again, though, with or without riders being whisked aloft to perform on trapeze-style rings. As for balletics, none top Odysseo’s gymnasts whose serial front-and-back-flips at lightning speed — even in shin-deep water — defy more than gravity. Although those acrobatic performers wear no wacky makeup or metre-long shoes, their risible antics echo circus pioneer Phineas “P.T.” Barnum. Knowing that 19th-century audiences saw horses everywhere around them, he said: “Clowns are the pegs on which the circus is hung.”

MALCOLM PARRY, VANCOUVER SUN  02.03.2017