HI Jackie,
As Classical dressage trainer, I couldn't agree more- watching paint dry can be infinitely more interesting than watching dressage done badly!! However, even a preliminary test, ridden skillfully, so that the whole test flows effortlessly from one movement to another, can be wonderful to watch.
I think that very few people, even those who know nothing about horses, would find watching the Spanish Riding School, or my particular favourite, the Alta Escola of Portugal, boring. Likewise, watching the very best in the world in competition dressage.What I hate to see, and see all too often in Britain, is horses being ridden through force by riders who are dricing with the seat, legs flailing heads nodding and thinking' don't I look wonderful!' The last time a couple of years agon now, that I spent three days at the National Championships, there were few riders there who wouldn't have benefitted from a spell on my Equisimulator, followed by a few daily sessions of lunging, then being taught to ride without the force displayed by so many. Invisible aids? Most of 'em wouldn't have a clue what you were talking about!Unless these riders, which are plain control freaks to my mind, come out of a lesson with a face like a beetroot and arms falling out of their sockets, they doon't feel that they have done good work.
I am off to Portugal again at the end of the month for a week's training, riding wonderful Lusitano stallions that respond almost to thoughts, right up to an including all of the Grand Prix movements. If you tried to ride in the way that many British competition riders favour, I think the stallions would sit down in protest.
This is what dressage is all about- when the partnership between horse and rider is so subtle that it is elavated to an art form. Then, it really is interesting and something you never stop learning about- the ultimate challenge of the partnership between man/woman and horse.
Heather