Horse Dance

When I was a kid, I learned some very valuable survival strategies.
One of them was, “Keep your mouth shut and your eyes and ears open.”
I learned never to reveal my thoughts or feelings until I thought I was pretty sure about what the thoughts and feelings of the “other” were. I learned to absorb every bit of information my opponent revealed while offering no information of my own, unless it was disinformation. I got very good at doing this, testimony to which is the fact that I’m still around.

When I first began spending time with horses, I thus “naturally” wanted to understand them, more than I wanted them to understand me. It was like going to a foreign country, and I needed to learn how to speak the native language, “horse.”
Only an arrogant ass goes abroad and expects everyone THERE to speak ENGLISH.
Yet a lot people seem to start out talking and talking, expecting to be understood, without first bothering to find out what language their audience speaks.

Green as a twig, one of the first things I did to understand my new companions was to try to feel what it was like to be a horse. My horse and I have quite a bit of anatomy in common, more or less, and so it was relatively easy for me to “equi-morph” myself, in my vivid, and admittedly bizarre, imagination, into having a horse body.

I got down on my hands and knees to try it on for size. I worked on the gaits. Felt what it was like to buck or rear, kick, or strike or even jump. The first thing I learned was that I needed to get a pair of knee pads.

After a time, it dawned on me that I didn’t really have to get down on all fours. I could do just as well feeling the gaits upright – plus it was easier on what’s left of my knees.
I noticed that, when I walk. the timing of my stride and arm-swing is really not very much different from the rhythm of the four beats of my partner’s walk, I could easily adjust to eliminate even that difference.
The trot was simple to understand, since I’ve run a lot of miles over the years. Diagonal arm/leg. Same-same.
For the canter I found a shuffling/skipping step matched exactly. On a left lead, my right foot shuffles under on the “rise”; my left foot and right arm work together in the middle; my left arm completes the “fall.” (Interesting to me is that the emphasis is on the last beat, the 3rd beat of the canter. This feels like a waltz to me, the 3rd beat of the canter being the first beat of the 3/4 measure and the 1st beat of the canter being the 3rd beat of the 3/4 measure.)

The few people who saw me doing this were quickly convinced that I was nuts.
And, of course, they were right.

Playing horsie led me to the next thing I tried: dancing with my horse.

Ever dance with anybody?
The dance I happen to like is the tango.
Argentine tango, not that bloodless ballroom thing.
It’s generally the case that one person leads, usually the Gentleman, and one person follows, usually the Lady. In the tango it seems to me that the Lady gets to do all the really flashy moves, while the Gentleman sets things up so she’ll be able to do them easily, effortlessly and, seemingly "naturally."

If the Lady doesn’t look brilliant, it’s largely the Gentleman’s fault.
Each person you dance with is unique – but similar, too.
Different people don’t do the exact same moves the exact same way.
But quite similar in principle.

The Gentleman has to communicate clearly using balance, pressure and release of pressure, so that his partner will intuitively choose to move in a certain way at a certain moment because it FEELS right.

That’s what I tried to do with my horse.
It wasn’t about teaching HIM how to respond to MY movements.
It was about ME figuring out how to ask for something in a way that he would understand.
He gets to do the flashy moves. My job is to set it up.
How could I get him to walk forward? To back up? To stop? Turn away from me, or toward me. How is it different if I’m facing him as opposed to facing the same direction beside him?

One of the things my tango teacher had the gentlemen do was to dance the lady’s part.
Understand what it is you’re asking your partner to do by doing it yourself.
Learn the best way to ask for a move, by learning what it’s like to be asked.
Sometime try it.
YOU be the horse. Without touching, follow a partner’s moves on the ground, mirroring their movements. This requires a relaxed alertness which is akin, I suspect, to the horse’s normal state of mind.

This is also pretty much what I do when I’m on my partner’s back. I feel his hind legs as if they were my own, and do with my legs and balance and etc, whatever I would do to walk or trot or canter, just as if I were using his legs to do it. If I do a good job, stay relaxed and “in touch” with my pony’s body, I always know exactly which foot is doing what. Really, you almost can’t help it.

I have no idea if this is the “right” thing to do.
But it seems to work for us quite well.

Very recently, I met another charming fellow by the name of Cisco, who seems to see virtues in me I’m not aware of, because he has rather adopted me as his own, greeting me in nearly the same way as my own long-time best friend does when I arrive at the barn.
I’ve done the Follow Me Dance with Cisco several times, now.
He did it so well almost immediately, that I suspect ONE of us must be brilliant.

And I believe I know which one.

sj