Abstract

The art of riding imagines the human-horse relation in the image of the centaur. In synchronous motions, riding is a dance of sorts, contact of bodies in the skin of the moment. Yet always there is the possibility of fussing, flailing, falling and failing in moments of resistance, evasion and contrariness. Through phenomenological reflection on such moments, riding can be understood not simply in terms of its difficulties of centaurian mastery, but in terms of the postural, positional, gestural, expressive nuances of interspecies communication. It is on the off beats, and within the syncopations and momentary stresses of riding, that resistance can be addressed through quiet insistence, evasions overcome through persuasion, and contrariness can be felt otherwise. Through contemplation of such moments, we find the reminders of a sensual and essential intercorporeality and the configuration of an agogic practice.

Highlights

  • Horse riding is a practice, a discipline, and some would claim an art, that is concordant with other somatic practices, disciplines and arts of self-and-other formation

  • A ready comparison can be made with the movement discipline of “contact improvisation” in terms of the latter’s essentially intercorporeal features of “vital contact” (Smith, 2014b)

  • The predicament in which we find ourselves as riders who seek to really know the horses we ride in their individualities, their particular temperaments, and distinctive manners of being with us and with others of their own kind, is not that these horses lose their identities within training systems to which we subject them and, most notably, when we seek to ‘perfect’ their movements through the training pyramid of dressage

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Summary

Introduction

Horse riding is a practice, a discipline, and some would claim an art, that is concordant with other somatic practices, disciplines and arts of self-and-other formation. The horse is gymnasticized and schooled in movements that come naturally, yet require years of training to be produced on cue by the rider’s most subtle almost invisible aids Such is the discipline of Grand Prix dressage. Oliveira enjoyed total mastery of the horse He could collect and balance a young, fit, unschooled horse within seconds; he had taught horses which had never been trained to changes in their lives, two and even one time flying changes in less than a week; a passable piaffe and passage could be extracted from untalented riding hacks before unbelieving eyes...It was almost as though he rode with an angel at his elbow.

Beyond Mastery and Control
Becoming Horse
The Hippagogic Moment
Falling out of the Moment
The Vital Moment
Conclusion
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