Standing Still and Huffing

I went to Lynn’s Riding Center in Forest Hills to see Show Pony. 

Standing outside, waiting to go in, I thought, we go to shows to be fed right? So I’m waiting to be fed. And isn’t it always this way? The line, the waitlist, the venmoing for a ticket, the searching for and finding a seat. There not being any left so you lean up against something, a rail, a wall, your date.  Then you have to decide which foot you’re going to pour your weight into first. 

Outside of Lynn’s Riding Center, the scent, whose notes were probably more complex than what I could pick up – manure, hay, the feed, the dirt, the first drops of rain that would continue to drop throughout the rest of the night – were all misplaced and welcomed when they met my nose. And I thought, this isn’t a show, it’s an event, while looking down at my jeans tucked into my boots that I put on just for the occasion. 

And in the waiting for the show to start, I thought, it’s already started, hasn’t it? We, the audience, have already been counted, corralled, roped in, made to be steady and still while a gate rolls down, closing us in. Inside of the riding arena or ménage, two black horses stand together, their affect flat and distant. Their muzzles hover over each other’s ears and nostrils. They seem to nip at each other until one of them lets out a gentle squeal before trotting away. They walk in semi circles in and out of unison, finding each other with their peripheral vision; finding each other at the perimeter of the riding arena which is covered in caramel coloured dirt. Their matching coats shine like black ink. It’s quiet except for the sound of hooves meeting the ground, the small huffs and grunts that escape them. Someone whispers, “This is the best pre-show ever.”

Jack Meriwether enters the ménage and walks along its semi-circle too, landing at the upper center. And I think, well now it’s actually starting. It’s Jack’s presence, his body, his two feet, his own gait, so familiar, that reminds me that the horses are horses. Not dancers, not actors.  Their role in this spectacle might only be as spectators of the crowd that looks on to them with anticipation, curiosity, fear, or concern for their safety and the safety of the performers. But as Benin Gardner and Isabelle Dayton emerge and the trio move with a freedom, urgency, tempered abandon and habitual casualness, the horses approach or retreat with a kindred patience. At some point, Dayton lounges on the ground and one of the horses tenderly nibbles at her golden hair. Gardner has one horse eating a treat from the palm of her hand. 

There’s much to be said about the choreography of everyday life – of objects, and animals, flocks of birds, kids on playgrounds – creating accidental organization or incidental acts of composition.  In Show Pony, Westbrook invites the audience to examine their own desire to personify another living thing and to wrangle a definition of performance and of being. The striking ontological juxtaposition between the horses and Meriwether, Gardner, and Dayton was bridged by a common behavior, a shared mystery, and unpredictable williness.  While the dancers movements, at moments, seemed like gestures of flattery or expertly distorted mimicry, they still remained distinctly human and charged by personhood. 

That is until Clara Kim, Spencer Claus, and Sophie Frizzell – their faces cold and eyes measured – enter the ménage in suits, skits, tights, button down, and dress shoes. Each of them stand before Meriwether, Gardner, and Dayton, now undressing, taking off their clothes to reveal a blue bikini, red wrestling onesie, and green leotard, but mostly skin and muscle. It’s in the hand off of their clothing, when Gardner looks particularly pissed, a sort of pissed driven by exhaustion and difference when I think, oh now they are the horses. The dancers assigned handlers hold and drape their clothes over their own bodies. The removal of the pedestrian clothing is predatory, ritualistic. I’m reminded of being told to take off my leg warmers and wrap sweaters during ballet class when I was a teenager and the beads of sweat that turned cold at the ballet barre. Feeling less like myself and more like a dancer. More of a body than a person. Dressage, often described as horse ballet, shares in the art form’s flavor of artistry, athleticism, and aristocracy which Westbrook mines, amplifies, and abstracts. Abstracts not by making obscure but by way of distilling and punctuating the codification and commodification of the human and animal body. 

Kim, Claus, and Frizzell mount, pose, and lounge at the perimeter of the ménage. Rather than dance, they act and behave. It is with their body language that they appraise, count, judge, wait, all with a hint of a care as they look after what’s theirs. 

As Show Pony goes on the unison phrasework by Meriwether, Gardner, and Dayton tightens as the horses are paraded around them. When guided by the actors, whose demeanors shift from cold to cautious, gentle and listening, I consider that the horses themselves might be the only ones in control of what happens next.  Up until this moment, it’s the dancers who have been choreographed while the horses weave between them motivated by instinct. 

Though Lynn’s Riding Center is beautifully worn and tenderly lit, JP Davis’ sound generates the suspended unease of containment and competition that doesn’t let up. The two horses are rounded up and guided out of the arena, maybe led to their stables, to eat or sleep. As soon as the horses are gone I think, the show’s over. But it isn’t, it burns for a bit longer as Meriwether, Gardner, and Dayton run in place, eventually standing still and huffing. 

When I was a kid, my parents drove up to Oregon from California every summer. I thought horses were meant to be caught in passenger seat windows as dark blurs between the blue and green of the sky and grassland. As the lights come down on Show Pony, the deep blue of the night sky is framed by large windows at the back of the riding arena and I feel like going on a drive. 

Photos by Harry Pont.