What is the difference between your “Classical” system and other’s “Modern” dressage?
I’m not sure why there is a debate because if horses aren’t trained and developed in a manner and system that ultimately leads to the lowering of the hindquarters due to the bending of the hind leg joints and carrying more weight behind coupled with the horse being supple and submissive, it just isn’t Dressage. I would assume the debate comes from the fact that some Dressage judges are awarding horses that are hollow and disengaged, showing flashy front end action but with no engagement from behind. I can certainly understand the concern because it then begins to look like Saddlebred riding.
Horses that come with natural, enormous suspension and big moving gaits that with no training at all look magnificent……until they are asked to collect. Even these “super” horse won’t collect, or especially piaffe correctly without being trained in the classical system, they simply slow them down and call it collection, even though they are hollow through the back and not lowering and bending their hocks and most telltale in the piaffe where they cannot hold the rhythm, the hindquarters simply bounce up and down with no lowering whatsoever and the transition usually suffer, becoming unbalanced and disengaged. The “super” horses that are trained “Classically” are stupendous.
A perfect example is Rusty and Ulla Salzbarger, Goldstern and Klaus Balkenhol, horses that were trained by the late George Theodorescu, . So….on one hand the horseflesh is just superb…..on the other hand…..it is allowing “shortcuts” in the training of these horses (or no real training) and the price will be paid as the horse moves up the levels. Of course if Judges continue to award high marks to horses that are not truly doing Dressage then it will become the way of the future. It will no longer be a contest of which horse is the best trained, developed and is in true self carriage but a contest of the best bred, most flamboyant and most likely the costliest.
So to answer your question, my suspicion is that “Modern” Dressage would require you to have the “super” horse that you could “crank and spank” into a winner under some Judges who haven’t read the guidelines from the Dressage Federation that claims to require engagement and impulsion.
One response to “What is the difference between your “Classical” system and other’s “Modern” dressage?”
Leave a Reply
Keith says: I agree with all you say….I have 4 very well bred warmbloods with superb movements. For the first 2 years they have only been taken trail riding ( with their back up!!) Jumped lightly, and now at 6 & 7 yrs of age I have started to do more complicated lateral work. I have studied the Old Masters from Kerbrech, De Capentary, Racinet, and Baucher, amongst others, the French Classical School, and have discovered that Phillip Karl has put into today’s “language” a “method” of classical French Dressage. The German School of Classical riding is different. To which School of Classicism do you subscribe to and why ?
I agree with all you say….I have 4 very well bred warmbloods with superb movements. For the first 2 years they have only been taken trail riding ( with their back up!!) Jumped lightly, and now at 6 & 7 yrs of age I have started to do more complicated lateral work. I have studied the Old Masters from Kerbrech, De Capentary, Racinet, and Baucher, amongst others, the French Classical School, and have discovered that Phillip Karl has put into today’s “language” a “method” of classical French Dressage. The German School of Classical riding is different. To which School of Classicism do you subscribe to and why ?