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A Dance of Angels

© Joy Butler

With manes and tails shimmering, like silvery angels from heaven, a dozen white horses entered the hushed arena carrying stiffly disciplined riders in Spanish array. Moving as if right out of a fairy tale, these perfectly harmonized teams encircled the arena like a floating mist.

For the next hour and a half, these magical dancing Lippizans entertained and mesmerized their audience. In the 400 year old tradition of the Spanish Riding School of Vienna, this equine ballet demonstrated sidesteps, precise trots, and flying leaps to the rhythm of classical music. Once a steed of nobility, these magnificent white descendents of the Karst horses of Lipizza Austria and the Spanish breed of Andelusians, were first bred for battle in the late 1500's. Many of the maneuvers displayed in this theatrical performance were employed in ancient warfare.

The audience watched in awe as these four footed dancers pranced around the arena, as if on pillows of air, in choreographed formations of sidesteps, the trot in place, the turn-in-place canter, and graceful lead changes which created the appearance of skipping. Many of these moves require years to accomplish and only an elite few ever master the magnificent one tempe of changing leads every single stride in the intricate dance that earned them the name, 'The Dancing White Stallions'.

The strongest and most talented stallions performed maneuvers used in battle, called Airs Above the Ground. The Levade, used to pull the rider out of reach of an enemy sword, required the horse to maintain a haunched position at a 45 degree angle. With a series of hops on his hind legs he performed the Courbette but perhaps the most impressive of all was the Capriole. With mane and tail flying like Pegasus in full glory, the stallion leaped into the air, drew his forelegs under his chest and kicked out with his hind legs in midair.

These precise steps and powerful moves demand great athletic ability and concentration. The theory behind the training of these Lipizzans is harmony. Natural gaits and movements of the horse in play are perfected through voluntary obedience by delicate coaxing, much praise and little force. Born black or dark brown, their training doesn't begin until they are 3 or 4 years old. They gradually turn snowy white over their first 6 to 10 years and many of them live to be 25 or 30 years of age.

Perhaps as stirring as their performance is their story of rescue during WWII when Vienna was under attack. The stallions were transferred 200 miles north but the mares were held in Czechoslovakia under German control. Fearing the breed's extinction, the head of the Spanish Riding School arranged for them to perform for US General George Patton, who was so impressed that he promised to make them wards of the US Army. In April of 1945, under orders of Patton, the 42nd Squadron of the US Army's 2nd Cavalry attacked German lines and retrieved the 150 Lipizzan mares and their foals. This story is depicted in the Disney movie, "Miracle of the White Stallions".

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