Escorial from Paula Josa-Jones on Vimeo.

For those of you who have not visited the RIDE site, here is a bit of what we call horse dancing. What I want to call attention to is the attunement, the listening, and the conversation between bodies. That is what has always been important to me about this work.

Escorial (aka Pony, and yes, he has his own page) is the equine performer. He is trained as a liberty horse (no restraint) by the brilliant Sarah Hollis of Tintagel Andalusians.We have worked with Pony and Sarah for nearly five years.  I think of it as the yoga of the herd.  Learning how subtle a signal is required to create a profound shift in Pony’s movement.  Rehearsals are humbling, because despite our  dancerly skills, our ability to communicate in herd-speak is always in need of improvement.  Sarah, being the alpha mare, keeps all of us in line.

Why this might be important to non-horse people: Since 87% of our communication is non-verbal, figuring out what we are communicating with our movement seems like a good idea.

For example, my horse Amadeo is majorly spooky. For a long time, I thought he might be autistic because his reactions seemed so disproportionate to what was happening around him. My godson is autistic, and I have had a similar difficulty in decoding his responses. What I finally understood is that Amadeo’a responses were precisely calibrated to his perception of the situation because he is hyper-aware of movement and the underlying emotional landscape. And in order to be around him, I had to become hyper-aware too, but not tense, not nervous. That is a very nuanced and subtle dance, requiring some deep inner and outer listening. And that is horse dancing.

When and with whom are you horse dancing?