Equine Artistry Transcends the ArenaPhotos by Tina Tarinelli Mauss
Dressage is frequently misunderstood, as a term and as a method. “Dressage
comes from the French word dresser, meaning to train a horse,” says
Kate Selby, dressage rider, instructor, and owner of The Equestry stables
in New Haven. While many identify dressage solely as a competition sport
in which horse and rider are scored on the horse’s ability to perform
technical, prescribed moves with agility, grace, and balance, it is the
dressage itself, the daily work with and training of the horse that matters
most to many trainers and passionate participants of the sport.
According to the United States Dressage Federation, “Dressage teaches a horse to be obedient, willing, supple and responsive.” Through the training of horse and rider the horse comes to respond to the slightest “aid” or signal from the rider – pressure from the leg, subtle closing of the hand or tightening of the rein. Dressage riders understand that everything springs from the training principles of dressage: proper movement of the horse, communication of horse and rider, development of the horse and its musculature, and the horse’s ability to move with grace and balance through the steps requested by the rider. “Dressage is about the fundamental training and development of the horse,” says Kate Selby, owner of The Equestry and former Equestrian Director of Dancing With Horses, a performance company that melds movements of horse, rider, and dancers. Dressage, Selby says, was developed to help work the horse, to bring his body and movements into alignment, “to make him work correctly and not against his own body.” It is that essential development that lies at the core of dressage training. Dressage is intended to enhance the horse’s natural movement. Vermont in the ArenaYet there is no denying that dressage is also a high-competition sport. The series of moves through which a horse progresses in its training – including extensions, lateral moves, pirouettes, passage, flying changes, and piaffe– increase in skill level as rider and horse pass from junior and amateur rank up through the classes to master and Grand Prix. At each level there is competition and scoring that determines the horse’s and rider’s skill. Here in Vermont we have given rise to multiple Olympic competitors and hopefuls, not only in dressage but in equestrian competition on all levels. A junior on the UVM equestrian team coached by Madeleine Austin of Williston, John Pigott, recently won the prestigious Intercollegiate Horse Show Association National Championships’ Cacchione Cup, the top coveted prize for collegiate competitors and the first ever such win for a Northern New Englander or UVM competitor. Ruth Hogan-Poulsen of Plainfield was our most recent hopeful, competing this year for a slot on the U.S. Olympic Equestrian Team before removing herself from consideration out of respect for her 18-year-old horse Armando. The strain of competition at that level would have been too much for Armando who, Hogan-Poulsen hopes, will live to 30 or better. Hogan-Poulsen has already won the United States Dressage Federation Gold Medal and the USDF Freestyle Gold Bar, for her achievements at the Grand Prix and international levels. The Grand Prix is the highest level of competition for dressage riders and carries with it high distinction and big prize money. Hogan-Poulsen follows in the footsteps of 1992 Olympic bronze medalist Carol Lavell who, until recently, spent summers training in Vermont. Art, Music, and AthleticismThe gaited steps, maneuvers, pirouettes, and gait changes that make for the Grand Prix moves of competition dressage may dazzle the mind, but it is often in freestyle that the hearts and souls of spectators, riders, and horses are captured and revealed. In freestyle exhibition, the horse performs brilliant dressage moves in a choreographed sequence to music. Riders and trainers often liken this aspect of dressage to the freestyle performance in figure skating, which stands in stark contrast to the compulsory figures program. In freestyle or kur, the rider and horse dance together, moving as one to music. “It’s a thoughtful, intelligent sport in which you are working with the most kind and beautiful partner possible,” Selby says. In dressage, particularly performance dressage, the horse is like a dance partner. At its highest level, it looks spontaneous, “like both partners are co-leading, sharing,” she says. Hence the birth of creative ventures like the Mozart Festival’s dressage exhibition choreographed by Michael Mauss of Windswept Farm in Williston, or Dancing With Horses by Kate Selby. These performances, born in Vermont of Vermont masters, bring art, movement, and expression to a new height. “It’s an ancient art,” Selby says of dancing with horses. “Louis XIV had dancers and horses performing in his court 400 years ago. In this country, there are very few people blending riding and dance,” she says. Dancing With Horses began as a project in 1999 when New York choreographer JoAnna Mendl Shaw attended the annual dressage performance at Shelburne Farms. Mendl Shaw had recently choreographed a one-time performance of riders and horses for Mount Holyoke. She was struck, while attending the Mozart Festival performance, by the abilities of horse and rider to communicate, translate, and perform together. She sought an extension of her earlier endeavor and, in partnership with Selby, went on to create fabulous performing troupes of horses, riders, and dancers. When dancing, the equine and human performers use deep listening, a means of connecting with one another, to bring bodies, movement, and rhythm together so that it is not just rider and horse, but rider, horse, and dancer on the ground who move together in interpretive dance. The goal, for Selby, “is to show the artistry and the similarity between dressage and dance.” Selby is continuing the tradition with her own company, The Equestry Equine Dance Company. The company will perform with dancer Naomi Wimberley-Hartman, and riders Kate Selby and Ellen Miller, in a tribute to American Jazz at the Basin Harbor Club on July 3 at 5 p.m. The performance is free and open to the public. Selby credits Vermont as a nurturing and inspiring environment. “Vermont is a rich fertile ground for dressage,” she says. 
photo: Jerry Reilley Vermont’s Mozart Festival MasterMuch of the development and interest in performance dressage in Vermont owes its nod to Michael Mauss and his almost 30-year tenure as director of the Mozart Festival dressage opener at Shelburne Farms. Mauss, like Miller (see profile), trained at the American Dressage Institute, under the tutelage of the instructors of the Spanish Riding School. It was in Vienna, however, while attending one of their performances, that he was struck by the power and artistry of the quadrille, a four-horse choreographed performance that can be done with or without music. “I really like the beauty of the music and the power of the horses,” Mauss says. The challenge for him, as he develops his selections for the Mozart Festival, is to vary the music, the performance, and the moves. “I try to make it a little more complicated every year,” he says. “My goal is to get it as close to what I saw in Vienna as I can.” To that end Mauss selects music that speaks to him, that imitates the gait of the horse or doubles it. “I have a very extensive CD library,” Mauss says. “I just thumb through it and start to listen.” Once he has selected the music, Mauss spends days listening and riding in his mind, marking the changes and breaks in the music where he will insert the movements for the horses and riders. Once he understands the music and the movements, Mauss sets the patterns on paper. “I don’t use musical notation,” he explains. “I’m not musically trained.” Nor is he trained as a choreographer, yet his patterns and moves are drawn out carefully so they can be communicated to the riders, then worked and perfected. Mauss and the riders have a long history together, performing on the grounds at Shelburne Farms. “I’ve worked with most of these people for a long time,” Mauss says of many of the returning riders who include Ellen Miller of Charlotte and Kate Selby of New Haven. These riders all share high and daring expectations of performance dressage. The caliber of their exhibition can be gauged by the sellout performances year after year. It’s All in the MovesThe key to performance dressage is the music. It accentuates the dressage maneuvers and gives horse and rider a second rhythm to follow, second to the gait of the horse itself. “I think horses really sense the music and respond to it,” Mauss says. Ellen Miller would agree. She says her horse Indius – Mr. Magnificent, as he is known –starts to perk up and move the moment he hears the music. “I keep music going all the time in the barn,” Mauss says. The horses love it, which makes for a logical point of contact between horse and rider. “So much of riding is not cogitating, it’s sensing,” he says. Music also connects the spectators to the horse and rider. “You can take people who know nothing about horses and dressage and they really know more than you’d think they would,” Mauss says. People respond instinctively to the horses. At a dressage performance in Montreal, an enraptured spectator once said to Mauss, “Look at all the horses skipping.” Little did she know that she had described the movement known as flying changes exactly as the USDF itself defines it. She got it, Mauss says. She may not have known the terms, but she got it all the same. That is the true power of art. Performances Around VermontJuly 23-25 July 11 - August 25 August 13-14 Web links for more information: Green Mountain Horse Association: www.gmhainc.org |
