Daily Practice
Dancing with horses ought to be a daily practice.
We create kinetic dialogues with equine partners.
This means learning their language, fine-tuning our equine ground skills, developing an exquisite ability to read a horse, adjusting the choreographic score day-to-day, reading the temperament of our equine partner, letting go, paying attention.
This is definitely not a skill one visits occasionally.
Posted by JoAnna Mendl Shaw at 8:28 AM - Permalink
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Focus on the horse's breathing
Following the stillness, following the approach and retreat, the next step of our dialogue is about touch.
Our touch is decisive, weighted touch without any directional intent.
The touch can be stroking. I like to keep my stroking curious. I assign myself the task of finding small anchors with the surfaces of my palm and fingers along the withers, against the long planes of his face, under the mouth. I am seeking spaces most humans do not use as stroking surfaces.
If I am intent upon my task and not waiting for any outcomes I can keep the flow easy and free.
The stillness is about resting into a point of contact. Stillness is not about waiting; stillness is no longer about time. I try not to be waiting.
I focus on the horse's breathing.
Posted by JoAnna Mendl Shaw at 7:30 AM - Permalink
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Scores - Creating Improvised Structures
In our dance studio work, my dancers and I create scores. By this I mean we create improvised rules structures for prescribed movement events.
For instance if person A does a jumping action, up and down, person B assigns that jumping as a cue for herself to run in a circle around the jumping person. The jumping person decides when this movement event is over by simply stopping and moving elsewhere in the space or by performing a very different action.
Usually person A and person B alternate who calls the cues. That way there is no one leader.
Sometimes I assign an "alpha" which means that I identify which member of the duet gets to call all the cues.
Sometimes we assign numbers to the rules and an outside person calls which rule the dancers must play. The outside caller becomes the choreographer.
We play with a strict adherence to the rules. When we get very good at this I allow for disobedience. Interruptions become acceptable. Rules can include splices from other rules. Often this process yields a new set of rules.
Then we take our scoring process into our work with the horses. The horses' behavior become the cues for rules.
Scoring keeps us in real time. Scoring tests our ability to make instantaneous movement decisions. Scores keep our dancing ego-less.
Posted by JoAnna Mendl Shaw at 6:37 AM - Permalink
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