C h o r e o g r a p h y

“You need never break a horse. If you want the horse to dance, you must never break him. The horse must like the training, enjoy the dancing. …” from The Legend of Flying Horse.

On a late fall afternoon, I went to Golden's Table Mountain Ranch to spend the afternoon with horse choreographer, Barbara Gardner. Barbara was wonderful: a petite woman with moxie, owner of 3 talented horses, and former owner of an experimental dance company in NY. She has spent the last 25 years as a horse choreographer, creating freestyles for World Cup and Olympic performances and exhibitions that have been seen at the National Western Stock Show, An Evening with Dancing Horses, and Ballet on Horseback, to name a few. At 65 years old, she was still spending her afternoons with her little herd of horses and riding two of them daily.

I talked to Barbara about the connections between horses and dance, about her experiences and performances, and about her horses. And she asked me about my thesis. I watched as she free-lunged her Andalusian gelding Vigo in the round pen. “Are you just focusing on riding?” she asked from the center of the ring. “That’s the image I proposed in chapter 3,” I said. “But I’m well aware that it is a limiting image and that communication on the ground is a huge part of it.” “Yes,” she agreed as Vigo was tuning into her from the edges of the pen. “This is all part of it. You can see he is listening to me, and I’m listening to him.” I watched as she slowed her body down in order to slow Vigo down from a canter to a trot, and eventually a halt.

On the walk back to the barn, with Vigo calmly in hand, Barbara began talking about what it takes to have a horse-human relationship. “It’s all about compromise—give and take. Compromise, concentration (focus), communication…and patience.” I agreed, and remembered a trailer loading incident about 11 years ago that took over 2 hours in the bone chilling cold which tested all of the above—especially patience. In relating dancing to riding, Barbara stressed the importance of learning to be passive, then learning to follow, then to direct.

As a rider, one must be passive and not get in the horse’s way; one must also learn to follow their partner rhythmically with grace and balance, and then a rider can direct the movement of the horse. The importance of following is the importance of feel and the awareness of the body—the rider’s and the horse’s body. A rider must learn the tempo and the body of the horse. Some European rider’s spend 2 years or more riding on a lunge line before they ever pick up the reins. Some will ride with no hands and go through exercises in which they will be told to close their eyes and tell the person holding the lunge line what hoof is leaving the ground. This allows them to develop a sense of feel that is rooted in their body’s way of knowing through feel and touch. These are exercises that strengthen one’s ability to ride with his/her body and not primarily with their hands.

“Do you really think it’s possible to ride 1200 pounds on 5 inches of mouth?” asked Barbara sardonically. Much like a VW bug, a horse’s “motor” (or drive) resides in the backside, or hindquarters, which means the impulsion carries through the horse from back to front when he is working correctly. That’s a lot of energy to be responsible for on the five inches of mouthpiece on the bit. I watched Barbara as she executed a half halt, where the horse rounds out his back and drives from the rear all in one foot-fall, all with her body placement. She also stopped Vigo with her seat and legs, not her hands. They proceeded to circle the arena performing various upper level dressage maneuvers with that sense of partnership that is seen in a dance hall.

Meeting with her not only deepened my thesis discussion, but (of course) ignited my horse passion again. Sometimes it is hard to be grounded when my emotions for wanting my horses back are so strong. But it made me realize that in the world of horses, I was raised well with a good bit of horse sense and common sense and intuition when dealing with these animals. I had to thank my lucky stars for getting started on the right hoof. Before I left, Barbara introduced me to a cute little bay Arabian gelding named Phamous. I would hope for him whenever I got bored writing my thesis.