I can't get over the fact that I found one of my dreams at K-Mart. Last week I found there a video of the Disney film, "The Miracle of the White Stallions." I've watched the performance sequences three times since.
Now, I see by the newspaper that a show featuring some horses of the Lipizzan strain are coming to Salisbury. This is not the Spanish Riding School troupe from Vienna, but the horses are still very fine.
The rescue of the four-centuries-old School by General "Blood and Guts" Patton, as portrayed in the film, would be paradoxical except that the horses' origins come from the battlefields. Those leaps; the courbette and the ballotade were meant to take their warrior riders into combat or out of danger. The levade with deadly forehooves poised at the ready, were daunting to any foe.
Today we view the Lipizzan exercises as an art form. The usual baroque musical accompaniment suits them perfectly.
Through the centuries, only the horse has made the transition from war to art with dignity, beauty, and purity. Tank ballet? Pas de Dieux personnel carrier? Ouzi Symphony? I don't think so.
The war-horses we watch today when the Spanish Riding School of Vienna brings the Lipizzans to the United States may be today's only example.
The usually-white chargers bear on their broad backs, not only the brown-clad troopers. They carry also the lifetime fancies of children, and grown-ups like me.
The horse is the winged Pegasus carrying us away to where we wish we were, away from a sometimes-disappointing world. The mythic unicorn is mostly horse. And to American Indian People, the horse is "a being of extraordinary idealization...a spiritual being of vast power and beauty."
The Vienna Lipizzans and I have a history.
I can't tell how many times I skipped seventh grade classes to see the movie, "Florian" -- how often I read the Felix Salten book from which it was taken, how many times I dreamed that it was I who took the beautiful horse through the "airs above the ground," amazing my classmates.
In 1964 the stallions of the Spanish Riding School came to the United States. I learned of the impending visit while they were still in New York and wrote for Washington tickets in my price-range. Too late; that level had been sold out long before.
On their next visit 17 years later, I was more fortunate, and more solvent. I asked for and got some of the best seats in the house. We had the equivalent of the Emperor's royal box; mid-way up opposite the arena entry.
When the riders entered for an introductory march-past, my tears came streaming. The wait from age 11 had been long and fraught with yearning. I could not see if I was alone in my gulping and mopping, but clearly no one was surprised, and no one sneered.
Besides the sheer joy of the performance, I had the fun of learning something about the American horsey sets. There are several.
Some came prepared to meet the Emperor Franz Josef himself. They wore evening togs; satins, tiaras, furs and black-tie. For this group the event was a social gathering with the horses as guests of honor. Or perhaps this was a gallery opening for self-propelled works of art.
The more conventional horse-show set wore tweeds, rat-catcher shirts and carried on knowing tack-room talk. They honored the interacting athletic prowess of horse and rider.
Then there was the blue-jeans, barrel-racing, apple pie and Chevrolet set for whom their own horses were their partners in work and play. They savored every levade and capriole with hearty thigh slaps and lusty cries of "Hey! Aw-ri-ight!"
Each of these folks was "correct," comfortably couth and jostling chummily in their mutual devotion to the shining focus of the evening -- the gleaming, satiny horses.
We had our right of place, too; those of us who were borne into the arena on our dreams alone. We floated on the fancies we had long shared only with childhood chums, through books and clipped-out pictures.
The horses in person were everything I had always seen when mentally projecting those stolen afternoons at the Lyric. Their movements and head carriage reminded me at once of Salten's description of Florian's "singing to himself" as he moved.
The riders made their last slow salute with the brown bicorns, and turned their shining mounts toward the gate. The audience stood as one person, clapping, cheering, weeping.
The eight chargers moved from sight as we remained on our feet in salute. We honored a tradition of performance which no longer daunted the enemy with iron-shod hoof and ringing neigh. Now the war horses' beauty and grace conquered our hearts and carried our dreams.
(The photo shows Neapolitano Nautica in a levade. In the background is the Gloriette, built in 1775 at the Schonbrunn Palace in Austria. Taken from the book: The Spanish Riding School; Four Centuries of Classic Horsemanship, written by the late Colonel Hans Handler while he was director of the school. The school was founded in 1572.)
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P.O. Box 2309 Ocean City, MD 21842 jocee@shore.intercom.net Other Writings by Jo Campbell