Power of 120 Pounding Hoofs

Seated before a mirror illuminated by dozens of lights, the hands of “Cheval” performer Caroline Mace are a blur as they grab lipstick pencil, then blush, then eye makeup.

After nearly 200 shows, Mace knows the routine. Cheeks, medium peach. Lips, crayon brown. If she forgets, it’s written on a custom makeup guide.

“If my makeup is too light or too dark, it doesn’t look right under the lights in the big top,” she said. “Recently, my hair was so curly that under the lights, it made me look like I had a cone head. So my hair was changed and makeup added, to give me more of a forehead.”

It doesn’t matter that this is an equestrian show with plenty of action. Detail is the name of the game for the producer, Gilles Ste-Croix, who created the Canadian show of 30 horses and 30 performers.

“Cheval,” which means “horse” in French, runs through April 21 at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa.

Mace, 30, is from Montreal. She is a former gymnast and stuntwoman who signed with the show a year ago. “Cheval,” patterned in many respects after Cirque du Soleil, the fanciful French Canadian circus for which Ste-Croix served as artistic director, is on a 19-city U.S. tour through 2003.

Mace is a 5-foot-2-inch dynamo who barely weighs 110 pounds, but during performances she takes command of a 1,000-pound-plus horse named Opus, a Clydesdale mix.

Originally used for dressage, Opus had a steady gait and other qualities of a draft horse that the show’s owners found useful. He was retrained for his performances in “Cheval.”

“Usually, when a human jumps or falls off a horse, the horse stops,” Mace said. “With Opus, he had to learn to keep going, and at the same speed.”

Mace, who’s listed in the show as a vaulter, synchronizes her act to the horse’s movements. “It’s all about trust,” she said.

Mace had never worked with horses before joining the show. She learned to understand arena work and how centrifugal force acts on a moving platform such as the horse’s rump.

And, when working with animals, there are no guarantees. “Once I was upside-down and some men started to do maintenance on the roof without telling anyone,” she said. “The horse heard them banging around up above and came unglued.”

She escaped injury, but injuries are common when working with such powerful animals.

Performers with the traveling show live in trailers or nearby apartments.

Christine Burelle, spokeswoman for “Cheval,” said local people are hired to work the stables, the box office, concessions and maintenance.

Before each show, assistant designer Marie Claude is busy in one of the tents, taking care of costumes--a job that requires patience.

“Repair, these costumes always need repair,” Claude said. “The artists, they get new muscles, they gain weight, they lose weight. Costumes rip.”

The costumes are a riot of color: maroons, coppers and oranges sewn with patches of velvet and leather. With the many costume changes, repairs must be quick for the next night’s performance.

Far from the glamour of the big top, there’s a work force the audience never sees.

For Jenny Ramirez of Santa Ana, the job came with specific instructions: “Just a reminder,” states a note Ramirez keeps in front of her work station. “Wash the men’s white collars by hand with the Fiesta soap, then place them on top of the refrigerator. Everything else can be washed with Tide.”

Mace said living out of a suitcase suits her. It keeps her motivated, and with the tour in California, closer to her other passion: surfing.

“I have two surfboards and a thick wetsuit because in Canada the water gets really cold,” she said.

She took up the sport six years ago during a trip to Costa Rica, when someone dared her to stand up on a board. “On my first day, I stood up. I haven’t been the same since. That started it all.”

Now, she tries to surf every day wherever she is, from the balmy shores of San Diego to the freezing waters of the Atlantic Coast.

“The whole reason I’m working is to save enough money to someday buy a house near the ocean,” she said.