Thursday, November 25, 2010

Best. Freestyle. Ever. Period.



Maybe not Ashley and Pop Art's best ride ever, but she still won!! THIS is where I want to see musical freestyles go if the dressage world EVER wants to get the more of the next generation interested. Keep it classical and for the most part traditional, definitely, but keep it fun. I love this one along with Steffen Peter's "Safety Dance" freestlye (one of my favorite 80s tunes haha!) that he (ironically) dedicated to Courtney King-Dye and that won him a bronze at the WEGs!

Plus a question for y'all: what would be YOUR dream freestyle?

I've come to the realization that Greta's gaits and personality would really do well in a freestyle with a French theme. Maybe some of the accordion music from Amelie for the canter, some Cœur de Pirate or Camille for the trot, maybe even a little bit of "Comptine D'un Autre Été" (the famous piano tune from Amelie).

Though somebody really needs to do a Bollywood freestyle. That would be beastly. It would require a horse with some energetic, elastic gaits and something a little exotic about him (or her.)

7 comments:

  1. I think Lady Ga Ga would be fun (some nice strong rhythms and upbeat tone), but I'm not sure my teacher Joan would agree (she's all for classical music) :)
    I may start riding to it this winter just to work on rhythm.

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  2. I really, really want to the a freestyle with Sofie to "So What" by Pink. That song is so...her. Of course this is all dependent on her ever being sound/trained enough to do at least a Training Level freestyle, but it is fun to imagine the possibilities.

    And I also have an upper level freestyle fully choreographed in my head to "Telephone" by Lady Gaga. Someone needs to ride to Gaga!! Seriously, enough of this super sophisticated classical stuff. Have some FUN, dressage people!!!

    And I like your Bollywood idea, too. That'd be neat.

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  3. YES to GAGA! And that would be a good idea to use that to work on rhythm. I'm thinking Bad Romance would be great to use. There's a really cool remix done by Starsmith that has a nice consistent rhythm with sections of variation over that consistent beat. It would be really good to work on precision as well as rhythm because of that. And it's REALLY catchy :)

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  4. me indie's second level freestyle is going to be jimmy buffet themed
    trot is going to be "take it back" which is by far my favorite part XD

    i've always wanted to do a musical ride to some Ke$ha and 3Oh!3 where the riders and horses have crazy body paint and like teased hair and stuff where there are like 8 horses all in the arena with awesome light show stuff, i think it would get younger people more interested in dressage if it was a little more out there

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  5. Cool video. I haven't heard of the Stefan Peters one. I'm gonna go search for it on YouTube. If I was a dressage rider I always thought it'd be cool to do a freestyle to this DJ Dan song:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwcXHujIU5c

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  6. Ahhh, I could seriously see somebody doing a killer extended trot bit to that song!!

    Yeah, just look up the one Steffen did for the Olympics and WEG (I think the one he did for the WEG turned out better than the Olympics one). It's The Safety Dance!! With a little bit of Coldplay's Viva La Vida (even better).

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  7. I have been visualizing rides to songs by the Vitamin String Quartet…yes I’m a dork. They are a string quartet but they play songs you will probably recognize. So if you have instructors who won’t let you get away with doing freestyle to the regular Lady Gaga songs…check out the vitamin string quartet versions. They are awesome. I really want to do a free style to “Dani California” or “Don’t Stop Believing”
    With my old horse I had always wanted to do a freestyle to Mellow Yellow, because…well that was his nickname. How cute would it have been to have a palomino doing freestyle to that song? My riding instructor thinks I should do one as a tribue to him. 

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