What is Dressage?
The History of Dressage: Dressage is often likened to figure skating, ballet or gymnastics on horseback. The word “dressage” comes from the French word meaning “training.” The practice of dressage traces its origins as far back as ancient Greece, where Greek soldiers and philosophers alike used humane and systematic training practices to train their horses for battle and to improve the beauty of their horses under saddle. Later, dressage was used on the medieval battlefields of Europe and as a form of art and entertainment in the courts of Renaissance nobility. Cavalry officers in the modern military also practiced dressage as recently as the 1940′s. From these traditions, we get our modern dressage competitions.
What is dressage? Dressage is the systematic development of horse and rider, resulting in a balanced, harmonious team. In its most basic stages dressage helps the horse and rider communicate with each other and develop balance, strength, flexibility and accuracy. For this reason, riders with different backgrounds and competitive goals – jumping, eventing and barrel racing – often use dressage as a way of creating a pleasant, athletic mount and improving the horse’s performance.
At its highest levels, dressage improves the horse’s ability to use his body, producing a horse that is light and balanced and seems to float effortlessly through the arena. The communication between horse and rider becomes so subtle that the horse seems to be performing on its own without any input from the rider. As horse and rider become more proficient in dressage, they begin to perform the more spectacular movements, such as the collected and extended gaits, lateral movements (where the horse travels sideways and diagonally) and collected work such as the pirouettes, passages and piaffe (where the horse trots in place).
