DANCING IN HORSESHOES.

JOANNA MENDL SHAW SADDLES UP FOR A NEW TWIST TO CONTACT IMPROV

Dancing with horses? It's a troika of horse/rider/dancer. And it is the latest outrageous exploration of the parameters of dance.

It took JoAnna Mendl Shaw, a dancer/choreographer from the Pacific Northwest who has choreographed for gymnasts and ice skaters, to see possibilities of an equine connection with dance. Shaw's initial experiment originated in a commission by Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts three years ago to enhance its horseback riding program. In an astonishing effort, Shaw created a work involving fifty horses and dancers--"the hardest thing I've ever done professionally." Speaking of this, Shaw explained, "What I consider the real juice of this is the part that is invisible to an audience. What we are doing is structured improvisation. It's an intimate place, a private place, but we invited the audience to watch us work. It's not just about entertainment, but we're trying to maintain this integrity and a respect for the horses."

Now Shaw has a partner, Kate Selby, coach to the Middlebury College Equestrian Team and a Prix St. George rider. Together they are developing their company, Dancing With Horses, into professional performance status.

Work went on in the deep of winter with a weekend clinic in February at Equistry, Selby's horse farm in Vermont, with twelve advanced riders, three dancers, and Hector, a horse trained in dressage. Shaw gave a demonstration of her efforts to merge improvised choreography with equestrian artistry. As Celtic music played, Selby moved Hector along. Shaw, keeping her hand on the horse's side, matching feet and pace, made an arcing gesture overhead. As Selby led Hector into a cross-step, Shaw instantly joined in, then turned away, still facing Hector. Once, Hector was startled by howling wind. Both rider and dancer had to adapt, reminding us that dancing with horses takes physical courage as well as a particular intelligence to attain a symbiotic relationship with the horse. Shaw terms this empathy "deep listening."

To develop this skill in the riders, Shaw taught classes in movement analysis in the warmth of the New Haven Town Hall. She used effort/shape exercises that demand coordination and balance, and she gave lessons in kinesiology to better use certain bones (scapula and tailbone) and muscles (psoas and hamstrings).

Mid-afternoon, Penny Campbell, dance instructor and director of the Dance Company of Middlebury College, taught a class in consciousness-raising through improvisation. From an eyes-closed isolation, Campbell softly talked the riders through a personal awareness to an experiment exploring another rider's aura without touching.

Applying these lessons was up to each rider. By Sunday, despite the cold, the riders could not be kept off their horses. Mounted all together, they practiced patterns riding side by side, crisscrossing the ring as Shaw and her dancers improvised alongside.

Shaw has given performances of Dancing With Horses in New York, New Jersey, and at the Mozart Festival at Shelburne Farm in Vermont last summer. More clinics are planned for May and an intense program for the summer. With the enthusiasm of the riders and intelligence of the horses, Shaw and Selby have reason to believe in the exciting potential of Dancing With Horses.

(For more information, see www.dancingwithhorses.org.)

Sharry Traver Underwood danced for Agnes de Mille, Hanya Holm, and Michael

Kidd and Charles Weidman. She ran the Vermont Dance Company for twenty years and is now artistic director of Dansarte, Inc., which reconstructed the "Lost Dances of Ted Shawn" at Jacob's Pillow last summer.