The Night I Danced at Devon

The Night I Danced At Devon
By Elizabeth Madlener
nbetween dreaming of being marooned on an island
with a black stallion or growing up in Wyoming with
Flicka, as a young girl, I longed to be another Margaret
O'Brien. I wanted to be a ballerina, gliding gracefully around
the stage and bringing magic to all who watched. However,
owing up in the 1940s in a small Indiana town severely
limited my opportunities. As it turned out, my time on the
stage was limited to two tap dancing recitals-not
exactly
what I had had in mind.
With horses I fared better. Indiana had plenty of ponies
to ride. Then when my father returned to active duty in the
army and was assigned to the Pentagon, I was able to begin
my formal equestrian education at Jane Dillion's Hayfield
(later Full Cry) Farm in Vienna, Virginia. After Virginia, we
moved to Germany where, of course, I was introduced to
dressage. Although I preferred jumping, I became quite intrigued with dressage.
From Germany, we moved back to Virginia and I re-
turned to hunters and jumpers. Dressage was nearly nonexistent in the States at that time. It wasn't until marriage took
me to Seattle that I was able to resume my education in
dressage. There I started working with a German trainer,
Klaus Albin, and after a few years, bought Bricks Babu, alias
Jonathan Swift. Thus began my on-going devotion to the
discipline.
In the seventies, dressage became fully integrated in my
life. In graduate school, I wrote a formal paper, The Rhetoric
of Dressage, in which I described the universality of the language, the aids of dressage. For an in-service training project
for teachers, I used the leaders' particular methodology to
develop lesson plans for teaching dressage. Finally, I determined I wanted to be entirely in the horse world, and I
threw away all trappings of security, resigned my position
and headed west in 1978 to train for the 1980 U.S. Equestrian Team Olympic tryouts.
As a lifelong horse lover who's naturally inclined toward
I
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analytical thinking, I found dressage fascinating and was toand then find some good backdrop music and voila!-a
freestyle.
tally absorbed during the early discovHowever, in the winter of 1982 and
ery stages. But when things started to
fall into place and stay there, I began to
1983, I was to learn that these dabbe bothered by the niggling question:
blings were mere child's play. That fall
"Why?" Why all this effort?
a former working student brought
On one hand, riding dressage makes
home a friend from college for me to
as much sense as devoting one's life to
meet. The friend turned out to be Doug
running up and down a court shooting
Mankovich, a former world-class ice
basketballs or perfecting a swing in
dancer and a fledgling dressage rider.
order to use a club to hit a ball into an
Doug was intrigued with the idea of
- impossible hole. Dressage also gives us
lifting dressage from the gymnastic forgreat insights into the more profound
mat and developing it as a dance fonn.
questions of life and philosophy. Yet, it
In the hope that he and I could work
does seem we spend an awful lot of
together, he brought with him some
time and energy building better equine
music he had put together with my
bodies for no real purpose other than
horse, Gulliver, specifically in mind.
to perform at the Grand Prix level.
The piece was in two parts. The first
It was then that I started dabbling in
was serious, soulful harp music which
freestyle. It seemed the logical way to
Elizabeth Madlener and Gulliver
Doug ingeniously merged with a raubring full expression to dressage. The
cous rendition of "My Heart Belongs
only approach I knew at the time was to put together a ride
To Daddy." I didn't know about Gulliver, but I loved the
Dressage Today 107
piece myself: the poet and the party girl in one statement!
In January, our serious work on the ride began and my
musical education became very intense. This ride would be
unlike anything I had ever experienced. Doug threw out the
usual spatial references within the arena; he ignored the
usual precepts of where the horse and I were going and
what we were going to do. No, the
dominating factor in this ride was to be
the music ... period.
Gulliver and I were to express the
music, responding to the phrasing, cadence and mood through the paces
and movements of Grand Prix dressage. There was no walk, trot or canter
music per se, but within the music
were measures saying "walk" or "trot"
or "canter." There were swells that
called for extensions and sweeps that demanded half passes.
I had to listen very intently to hear the subtle cues, and I
found that for the first time in my life, I was really beginning to hear music in its complexity. We never expected the
audience to see what we heard, but we did know that a
wrong foot at the wrong time would clash with the music
(however slightly) and would yield a sense of dissatisfaction
to the viewer.
During our work I began to realize I was no longer thinking about riding each movement. My body and my horse's
body had to operate as a dancer's, using all of the training
and muscle memory in order to be in
accord with the music. I also found I
could not practice the ride without the
music, for I reacted not according to
where I was, but to what I heard.
Doug, of course, had originally
to
mapped out the ride, but as mount met
its
music, he made changes. Throughout
our work we continued to make
changes, ever striving to draw the music
out through the dance. There was always a pattern, but it was shaped more for us than by us.
For instance, in the second part of the music where the
saxophone dominates, we had included a lO(ish)-meter serpentine through the diagonal, followed by a full canter pirouette, followed by a series of two tempi's. The exact size of the
I found that for the
first time in my life, I
was really beginning
hear music in
complexity.
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half-circle varied according to the speed at which the music
was being played. (Each sound machine varies slightly.) The
music is very clear as to when the flying changes should
occur, and in order to make the correct impact, they must
happen at the tangent between the two loops. I also had to
come into the pirouette exactly right as each step was underlined by the sax. Where the pirouette ended determined where the two
tempi's began, but they had to end
deep in a corner so that I would have
enough room to match the swell in the
music with an extended canter. Whew!
(It was an exhausting ride!)
Throughout the winter, whenever
Doug could get away from Brown University, we worked on The Ride. Finally,
in June we made our debut at a show in
Richmond. We were fortunate enough to have a judge with
an artistic soul, and we came away with an unprecedented
93 percent! We figured we were about as ready as we would
ever be and awaited Devon with eager anticipation.
Devon weekend arrived with its usual 95 July degrees
with 95 percent humidity. It was to be an especially busy
weekend. Doug had arranged for a producer from ESPN to
be there, and I was to interview riders and judges as well as
do demonstrations for him. In addition, I was showing
Doug's horse at Second and Third Level, another horse at
Prix St. Georges and Intermediaire I, and Gulliver at Grand
Prix. With all that, I still had too
much time to worryr'What if Gulliverwho-shied-at-flower-boxes
took exception to the lights? To the evening
crowd? To the train? What if? What
if?" I was pretty tense.
Then it was time and I was fine.
Once in the ring, we were both absorbed by the music. During the first
part, where I was to emulate a woman
searching for her lost love, I even
managed our choreographed sweep with my arm and only
momentarily dropped the reins (unchoreographed).
Then it was over. I saluted and suddenly, there was a
tremendous burst from the grand-stands: people cheering,
stomping, clapping, and they kept it up all the while we
I even managed our
choreographed sweep
with my arm and only
momentarily dropped
the reins.
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walked out of the arena, down the side
of the Dixon Oval and out the gate.
Fortunately, Gulliver remained poised
as we exited, walking with stately dignity. It was all quite wonderful.
We had done it! I couldn't have
asked Gulliver for more than he had
given. I never dreamed of doing a better dance ... and they-the
audienceloved it!
We didn't win, though. In fact,
we placed pretty low in the standings
that night. The ride was a bit avantgarde, and the judges took exception
to certain movements, like our figureeight volte with a counter bend
(searching for my lost love), and wrote,
"wrong bend." Similarly, they weren't
impressed with our zigzag on the diagonal, which counted ever-diminishing
strides (4/4, 3/3, 2/2 into a string of
one tempi's), and commented: "Zigzags should be performed on the center
line and be symmetrical on each side."
Admittedly, it was hard to lose, yet
it didn't really tarnish my joy. That
night remains for me one of those special moments in time when everything
just comes together. I had done something to the very best of my ability and
was able to fulfill a dream that had
been with me since early childhood. 9
American Horse Shows Association "I" level judge Elizabeth
Madlener has guided numerous
mounts to national year-end awards
in every level of the sport of dressage, while concurrently
qualifying
riders for national championships.
An experienced writer as well as an
equestrian, she currently trains riders and horses in Maryland. She also
is a member of the Editorial Board
of Dressage Today.
Dressage Today is looking for stories,
that epitomize the special relationships
dressage riders have with their horses.
Send your submissions, complete with
photographs when available, to "Transitions," Dressage Today, 656 Quince Orchard Rd., Gaithersburg, MD 20878.
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