Ballroom Dancing for Horses by Jasper Winn

BALLROOM DANCING FOR HORSES THE SPANISH RIDING SCHOOL By Jasper Winn In 1562, Maximilian II imported Iberian horses into Austria. Like the rest of the Hapsburgs, the emperor was an ardent enthusiast for Spanish etiquette at his court; indeed he believed that even the royal mounts should ‘know how to conduct themselves.’ The idea of the horse as a sort of equine courtier was born. This was the time of the Renaissance and the classical age was studied as inspiration for culture and, indeed, horsemanship. Rediscovered writings on equitation from almost two millennia before, those of Pliny and Xenophon amongst them, became the building blocks for a classical style of training and riding. Maximilian II founded an Imperial stud at Kladrub in Bohemia, whilst in 1580 his brother started another stud of Spanish horses at Lipizza, (now in Slovenia, but then a part of Austria). The best of the horses were brought to Vienna for training.

Today the traditions of the Spanish Riding School are built on those early ideas and on their subsequent refinements. The flourishing arts world of the Baroque era in the second half of the 17th century produced sculptures and paintings as well as elaborate ballets or ‘carousels.’ The latter spectaculars featured horses, and the arts did much to celebrate the idealised conformation of the Lipizzaner stallion. Tradition became all, and so the riders of today still wear the tailcoats, yellow leather breeches, high boots and bi-corn hats of the early 19th century ‘empire’ uniform. And the home of the Spanish Riding School is still within the confines of the Hofburg – the Imperial Palace – at the very heart of Vienna. The present building, the Winter Riding School, was built in the 1730s for use both as an arena for performances of horsemanship before the court, and as a ballroom and a concert space for Beethoven, amongst others, to perform in.

Through the centuries the school has had to weather the fortunes of Austria’s history, with many of the severest threats to its continuation coming in the last hundred years. Lipizza, the historic stud of the Lipizzaners, was within a region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire ceded to Italy after WWI, and now a part of Slovenia, and at the time much of the breeding stock was rapidly moved to Piber in Austria’s own Styria province, where the school’s stud is now situated.

Following WWII Vienna, already greatly ruined by bombing, was occupied by American, British, French and Russian troops who divided up the running of the city between them. In those uncertain times the Spanish Riding School successfully appealed directly to America’s General George S Patton, a 1912 Stockholm Olympics equestrian competitor and commander-in-chief of the American occupation, requesting to be allowed to continue the school’s centuries of tradition. The American occupying force assured the school’s safety of the horses and the school.

Today the Spanish Riding School still teaches and performs Renaissance haute école in a tradition that has been passed by practical instruction from one generation of riders to the next through nearly 450 years.

I met Arthur Kottas-Heldenberg, the Oberbereiter with overall responsibility for selecting and training the Spanish Riding School’s horses and riders, on a chill November morning in the offices of the Winter Riding School before one of the daily winter training sessions. Whilst we talked lines of saddled Lipizzaners were been led into the school from the stables on the other side of Augustinerstrasse. Groups of horses had been exercising since seven that morning, whilst tourists who had been queuing outside the school for an hour or more had finally been let in. Several hundred spectators lined the high galleries overlooking the 180 feet by 60 feet of the arena. I sat in solitary splendor below, at horse height, with Herr Kottas-Heldenberg beside me to explain the history and traditions of the school, and to relate them to today’s training and performance.

Kottas-Heldenberg’s future in the Spanish Riding School must have seemed pre-destined. “My parents had the oldest private riding school in Vienna and I had my first pony when I was two and a half years old,â€