It’s All In The Details: Steffen Peters
When Steffen Peters sat down to ponder the choreography of a freestyle for Floriano, the first thing he
considered was how to show off the expressive chestnut’s highlights.

“I start with the passage and finish with the passage,” he said. “In the beginning, we go straight from the halt into the passage and then go into a piaffe.”

The ability to transition smoothly from brilliance to relaxation is one of Floriano’s strengths. Peters said the hardest part of the test is when they transition from extended canter to piaffe straight into extended walk.

“At the [2006 World Equestrian Games in Aachen, Germany] the judges really appreciated that we could show that much relaxation after such difficult movements, especially a movement that can create a little tension,” said Peters. “After the walk we go straight into the trot half-pass. The first step in trot is a trot half-pass, and that also makes it very difficult. When we used to do the freestyle—all of those little things—I’m not sure they were really appreciated by the judges, but it’s those movements that make it so difficult. It’s not just flying changes on a serpentine or on a circle.”

Peters of San Diego, Calif., has changed his freestyle slightly after receiving comments from the judges. For instance, he now chooses to do the extended walk on a straight line instead of on a circle. “You definitely listen to input from other people, but I think at this point we’re done with tweaking,” he said. “I’m not sure where else I could make it too difficult or it would be simply too overwhelming for Floriano.”

Just as Peters has carefully crafted every step of his freestyle choreography, he also wanted music that would reflect Floriano’s precision.

“The music was written in the studio,” he said. “If I’m not perfectly with the music . . . I’ve got to find the rhythm and the tempo of the music and stick to it.”

So far, Peters said, he’s been right on with the music in every performance, but that’s due to hours of listening to his music and practicing to it.

“I don’t necessarily practice the whole freestyle, but I play it and try to find exactly the tempo and the rhythm that I need to be in to make sure Floriano is with the music, not just for the transitions but also with the rhythm,” he said. “Nowadays, that’s what’s required at the international levels—you can’t just use supporting music—it really has to fit the rhythm of the horse.”

Floriano dances down centerline to Fleetwood Mac, featuring “Don’t Stop” predominantly as well as some music from Supertramp and John Lennon’s “Imagine” for the walk.

“I’ve always been a big Fleetwood Mac fan,” said Peters. “I listened to it once on a live version, and it was so impressive. I was hoping to recreate that in the studio with the same intensity.

“I think besides the exciting part of the music, it needs to be a little bit emotional,” he continued. “That’s why I picked that walk piece of John Lennon’s.”

Terry Gallo, of Klassic Kur, created the music for Peters. “She’s always accommodated me when I needed something changed very quickly,” he said. “She always did her work within her timeframe. She did the first freestyle for Udon in 1992. It’s been 15 years that I’ve worked with Terry, and I certainly couldn’t do this without her.”

Although Peters isn’t a huge fan of all of the work that goes into creating a new freestyle, he said he really enjoys riding them upon completion.

“My favorite part happens on the days when you’re just a little bit more ‘on’ than others,” he said. “When Floriano is not really expressive, then the music doesn’t fit that well. That’s the neat part—if I’m really with the music, then I know I have the right tempo and the right expression. That’s always a challenge, and that’s what it’s all about—keeping the standards high.”    Sara Lieser

She’s The One To Beat: Isabell Werth
Look out, because it looks like it’s Isabell Werth’s turn. Last year, Werth came achingly close to defeating the seemingly unbeatable three-time FEI World Cup Finals winners Anky van Grunsven and Keltec Salinero.

Werth and Warum Nicht FRH finished a close second for Germany in the 2006 FEI World Cup Final in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, just .60 percentage points behind van Grunsven.

And this year will be a van Grunsven-free World Cup Final, as the reigning queen of the freestyle gave birth to her second child on March 6 and will not be traveling to Las Vegas for the Final.

So, Werth will be the odds-on favorite, with her Warum Nicht back in top form, as they won the CDI-W classes at Maastricht (the Netherlands) last November, and at Neumünster (Germany) in February and the final qualifier in ’s-Hertogenbosch (the Netherlands) in March (see p. 144). And Werth’s scores with “Hannes” have been phenomenal, reaching her own personal record in Neumünster with an 83.60
percent, with a score of 10 for a piaffe.

Werth will ride the same freestyle she did at last year’s Final; she’s been using this test and music for Hannes for the past 11⁄2 years. “I don’t want to change the music or the choreography because they work so well. Hannes is very athletic and sparky, so I like to show the difficult transitions between extension and collection,” she said.

Werth choreographs her own freestyles, and Michael Erdmann puts together the music.

Werth uses her freestyle to showcase Hannes’ adjustability and power. “It’s very difficult because of the transitions. I have extensions in the trot and canter, and I go directly out of the trot extensions to the passage half-pass. And out of the extended canter, I go directly into the pirouette or the one- and two-tempi flying changes. There are a lot of forward and backward [transitions] to show the athleticism of the horse,” she said.

“There’s nothing in the test I don’t like. It’s not boring!” she added with a laugh.

But Werth’s favorite portion of the freestyle music is composer Edward Elgar’s “Pomp And Circumstance.” “It’s a very emotional choice,” said Werth. “I had this music one time in a prize-giving [ceremony], and I got goose bumps on my arms when I was passaging to this music, and I said to myself, ‘I must have this music for a kur.’ ”

“Pomp And Circumstance” accompanies Hannes at the trot, passage and piaffe. Werth chose Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” for Hannes’ canter work. It might seem an incongruous choice, but “Bohemian Rhapsody” “isn’t rock; it’s classical pop, really. They work well together; it’s very harmonious,” Werth said.

More music from Elgar goes with the walk. “This music is very special for me, very close to my heart. I put a lot of emotion into it,” said Werth.

Having ridden Hannes’ freestyle for 11⁄2 years has given Werth an edge. “You need a few months and maybe 10 competitions to really know the music. You have to hear it often to really realize all of the little things and the timing of the transitions. Now, with each step, I know where I am in my music,” she said.

Hannes had been Werth’s top choice for the 2006 World Equestrian Games (Germany), but he had to miss the WEG with a minor injury. The giant chestnut gelding returned to competition in November at Maastricht.

“Now, after his injury, and after a break, I’ve felt much more faith and confidence in him, because he developed and has settled down. Now I can start to ask him for more and more. He’s just 11, but we’re on the way to asking him for everything. For a rider, it’s a great feeling to bring up a horse all the way to a very high level,” she said.

Werth has been riding Hannes for three years, and at the Grand Prix level for almost two years. “It’s a big goal for me to show his potential. It’s always a long way with a young horse,” she said.

“When I started with him, he was big and long and without muscles, and a lot of people thought ‘What’s that?’ After a while, he improved so well. Last year at the World Cup Final, he really started his career and he improved so much there. And he’s gotten so much experience this season that I’m really proud of the whole program.”    Molly Sorge

She Rides To A Classical Composition: Imke Schellekens-Bartels
It’s fitting that Imke Schellekens-Bartels should show off her new freestyle in the competition her father, Joep Bartels, helped to create. She placed fifth last year in her first FEI Dressage World Cup Final and aims to improve upon that result in Las Vegas.

Schellekens-Bartels, 30, of the Netherlands, decided a new freestyle was in order after competing at the World Cup Final in Amsterdam last year.

“The freestyle I had been riding until then was made for my mom’s former horse, Jazz.

It was beautiful, but it didn’t totally fit Sunrise’s movements,” explained Schellekens-Bartels. “And now that she’s gotten so good, I decided that she had earned and deserved her own music.”

Two years ago Schellekens-Bartels performed a live show with the famous Dutch pianist Wibi Soerjadi. She rode while he played piano and enjoyed it so much that she consulted Soerjadi about music for her new freestyle.

“He proposed to compose a totally new piece of music especially for Sunrise,” said Schellekens-Bartels. “And, of course, I thought it was a great idea!”

Soerjadi generally plays classical music, but Schellekens-Bartels once heard a piece of his music played by a rock band and really liked the sound.

“I asked him if it would be possible to make something classical combined with some rock feeling in it,” she said. “And so we agreed about the sound.”

Schellekens-Bartels worked together with her mother, Tineke Bartels, and Joost Peeters to create the choreography for her new freestyle. Peeters videotaped Schellekens-Bartels riding her new test and then sent the DVD on to Soerjadi.

“He looked at it a couple of hundred times and then started thinking about the feeling he got when he saw Sunrise and me, and how he wanted to express this feeling in the music,” said Schellekens-Bartels. “The nice thing is that Wibi Soerjadi rides as a hobby and knows the wonderful feeling of it. The canter music is especially impressive because he knows the feeling of the canter.

“Wibi knows, as no other, how to get a very emotional feeling into the freestyle,” she continued, “from silence, to excitement and parts that really make you get goose bumps. I really had, and still have, to listen to the music so many times, so that I don’t get goose bumps anymore while riding it!”

Her favorite part of the new freestyle comes in the canter pirouettes and the tempi changes that follow. “The music is very silent in the pirouettes and really builds up the excitement toward the one-time changes,” said Schellekens-Bartels. “And that’s the most wonderful moment in the freestyle.”

She rode the new freestyle for the first time at a World Cup qualifier in Amsterdam in January, which they won. “Afterward, I spoke to people and received e-mails from people who had been crying after seeing and hearing my freestyle,” said Schellekens-Bartels. “I never had such an experience before. And, of course, that is what we do it for!”

When Schellekens-Bartels created her new freestyle, her goal was to make it beautiful and suspenseful. “The audience is so concentrated on watching it, because of the excitement of what’s coming next,” she said. “You can feel that something is going to happen. And it’s not just the footfalls that have to fit—it has to fit the character of the horse and rider. It has to show the power of the horse, as well as the lightness.”
 
The entire freestyle was composed as one piece of music. Most of it is Soerjadi’s piano music, but drums, guitar and bass are also a part of the composition. Peeters arranged the other instruments and was responsible for recording the music.

“What Wibi Soerjadi did is not just looking at the footfalls,” said Schellekens-Bartels. “He looked at the whole picture. Especially in the canter part, it isn’t just the rhythm of the footfall that you hear, but you also hear the moment of suspension, and you feel the power and movement of the muscles of Sunrise.”

This will be Schellekens-Bartels’ first trip to Las Vegas for a World Cup Final. “I hope I can make the audience feel what I felt the first time I heard my music, and that they enjoy my wonderful Sunrise as much as I do,” she said.     Sara Lieser

A Gladiator Always Walks To The Fight: Catherine Haddad
When Catherine Haddad first saw the movie Gladiator (2000), it left a big impression. She even named her horse, Maximus JSS, after the character that Russell Crowe plays in the movie, Maximus Decimus Meridius.

“He’s named after Russell Crowe’s character because if he were human, duty and honor would mean everything to him,” said Haddad. “He has incredible strength of character and a very quiet stoic determination to be a top athlete. He’s a horse that wants to succeed.”

So when she considered music for a freestyle, it’s no surprise that she was drawn to use the score from the movie.

“I wanted to create something that was not only appropriate for the judges, but also would really appeal to the spectators,” she said. “It should grip the crowd, create a lot of suspense and draw them into a story. I took the music from the film and tried to portray parts of the film with my freestyle.”

Haddad and Maximus enter the arena at the walk because, “the gladiator always enters the stadium for the fight at a walk. He never runs. He always walks to the fight, and we do the same,” said Haddad, a U.S. rider based in Vechta, Germany.

“We enter to vocals from the film. Our entrance is very dramatic,” she continued. “You hear the gladiator trainer say, ‘Win the crowd and you shall have your freedom.’ And Maximus (the gladiator) responds with, ‘I will win the crowd. I will give them something they’ve never seen before.’ Then we start to incredibly dramatic passage music.”

They finish with a scene from the movie as well. “Our final salute uses the music where the gladiator dies,” said Haddad. “In his mind he pushes open the kitchen door at his home in Spain, and that’s the way my final salute is choreographed. I do the same thing with my hand that Russell Crowe does in the film when he pushes the door open.”

Haddad choreographed her freestyle 11⁄2 years ago, hoping that it would be the one to take her to Las Vegas. “I’ve made a lot of changes to it since,” she said. “I’ve rewritten it many times and made it harder as Maximus has gotten better and stronger in some of the more difficult movements.”

Juergen Niemeyer put the music together for Haddad from different sections of the film score. “He cut up pieces of the music and put it in roughly to see what I would think, and then we made good transitions,” said Haddad.

“He’s done a wonderful job and made it more dramatic than I ever thought it could be.”

Haddad’s favorite part of the freestyle comes in the final passage zigzag up centerline. “It’s grandiose, uplifting, and I’m always relieved to get to that point!” she said with a laugh. “It’s one of the more difficult movements, but the easiest for me to ride with Maximus, so we both enjoy it.”

Other difficult components of her freestyle include double pirouettes and passage half-pass to piaffe pirouettes. She also performs 27 one-tempis on a serpentine.

“It’s really important that you’re able to make it look easy,” said Haddad. “If you’re going to do a movement that’s considered technically difficult, then do the one that’s easy for your horse, and that’s what I’ve tried to do with Maximus. There’s a lot of difficult stuff you can do at home, but when you get in the show ring and you’re under pressure, it just doesn’t work anymore.”

Another difficult aspect of Haddad’s freestyle is the timing in her transitions. “The music is cut exactly on the point of the transitions,” she explained. “I had to be able to ride the choreography from point to point. There’s no room for error in my choreography. I’ve worked a lot of the kinks out of it.”

And while, of course, Haddad aims to win every competition she enters, the thing she enjoys most about her freestyle is how fun it is to ride.

“I always get wonderful comments from the people who watch it,” she said. “When a spectator who doesn’t know me comes up and says, ‘I really enjoyed your freestyle, the music moved me,’ that’s sometimes a much
bigger reward than a high score on paper.”    Sara Lieser

She’s Bringing The Cabaret To Las Vegas: Kyra Kyrklund
What could be more fitting than riding to the score from the musical Cabaret in Las Vegas? Kyra Kyrklund of Finland plans to do just that with a specifically composed piece for her 12-year-old, Swedish Warmblood gelding Max.

“I always wanted to use it, but all the music I found was vocal,” said Kyrklund. “When we decided to make an original recording, then the choice was easy.”

She had a connection through one of Max’s owners to Michael Conn, a classical guitarist who toured the world. He left the stage to write music for film and TV, including themes for major sporting events such as the 2000 Sydney Olympics and the British Broadcasting Corporation Olympic coverage.
 
Conn was happy to put together an original piece using music from Cabaret. “We spent a lot of time with him, which culminated in an exciting day in the recording studio in London with 17 live musicians and a team of engineers,” said Kyrklund.

She created Max’s current freestyle for the 2006 FEI World Equestrian Games because his original Grand Prix freestyle had been made early in his Grand Prix career. “I have now been able to add more technically demanding movements,” said Kyrklund. “Now, the most difficult parts are perhaps the pirouettes with one hand and the passage half-passes.”

Max has continued to improve and strengthen since the WEG, where they finished seventh in the freestyle. Kyrklund finished fourth in the Western European League overall after the final qualifier in s’Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands (see p. 144), where the pair placed fourth in the freestyle (76.55%).

She begins the test with passage and piaffe pirouettes, showing off Max’s strong ability to sit and collect.
Setting the atmosphere is one of Kyrklund’s greatest concerns in her freestyle. “I try to find music with the same theme. In this freestyle, I particularly like the mood of the music dating from the 1930s,” she said. “When I have chosen the music, I listen to it and fit the highlights of the program with the highlights of the music (like pirouettes, changes, piaffe-passage and transitions). In that way I am able to ride to the music and not manufacture the music to my ride. It is also important to me to maintain the original musical melodies rather than cutting and pasting pieces the tracks together.”

Kyrklund said that she likes to have clear lines and symmetry in her choreography. The whole piece, both musically and choreographically, makes a complete picture.

She also said that the electric atmosphere of Las Vegas will only benefit their rides. “Max has a wonderful temperament and loves to perform—the more people and the bigger the atmosphere the more he loves it,” she said.    Sara Lieser

A Last-Minute Substitution Equals A Big Hit: Andreas Helgstrand
Blue Hors Matine and Andreas Helgstrand captured many hearts worldwide as they danced through their Grand Prix tests at the FEI World Equestrian Games in Aachen, Germany, last summer.

The 9-year-old, Danish mare’s gravity defying piaffe and passage combined with her focused expression and flying tail left a lasting impression on the spectators and judges. The pair won the Grand Prix test, finished third in the Grand Prix Special and took home a silver medal in the Grand Prix freestyle for Denmark.

A videotaped version of that impressive freestyle has been shared around the world thanks to the website www.youtube.com—and still viewers keep returning for another glimpse of this fantastic athlete.
But that freestyle that won the hearts and minds of so many wasn’t even intended for Matine originally. Helgstrand planned to ride Blue Hors Don Schufro at the WEG, and only substituted Matine when Don Schufro was injured.

“I had to change the program, but we kept the music because we thought it was very fitting,” said Helgstrand. “The guy who made it for me said it should be something that would be very fine to listen to for 50,000 people. It had to be something that would pick them up— they should think it was fresh and not too slow.”

To ensure that the crowd would love the freestyle, the designer included pop hits from the 1980s and ’90s including “Lady Marmalade.”

And the reaction of the crowd at the WEG proved that their music choice had been correct. “People were really happy, and they started to clap at the end of the freestyle and stand up,” said Helgstrand. “So we knew it must be something good.”

Although the music was left unchanged for Matine, Helgstrand did have to adjust the choreography to fit the young mare. “Don Schufro has a little bit more experience, so he could do one-tempis on the circle, and that wasn’t possible for Matine at that moment,” he said. “I think the program right now is good for Matine because something happens all the time, and I can keep her with me.”

He particularly likes the difficult movements early and late in the freestyle. “In the beginning I start from the halt to double pirouette and one-tempis and double pirouette on the centerline. I think that’s very difficult, and I know people think, ‘Wow!’ when they see that,” said Helgstrand.

A piaffe pirouette onto centerline kicks off the last part of the test followed by transitions from passage into piaffe then into passage half-pass, then piaffe, then passage half-pass back to the center before a final impressive piaffe. “I like that part too,” said Helgstrand with a grin.

He admitted that he’s only ridden the freestyle in competition twice, once at the WEG and again at the final Western European League World Cup qualifier in ’s-Hertogenbosch (the Netherlands), where he also placed second (see p. 144).

“It’s still very green for me, so some parts could be better, but the music is really great,” said Helgstrand. “I look forward to going into the freestyle because I know people like the music. It’s best when the audience makes a standing ovation, but of course that’s not every time. But you know yourself if you’ve made a good test. And if I’ve done a good test then the audience will also be happy.”

Helgstrand plans to ride the same choreography he performed at the WEG. “It’s enough,” he said. “At the moment she’s quite good. The beginning is very good. If I manage the first part then it’s good.”

He rode in Las Vegas in 2005 aboard Blue Hors Cavan and was quite excited about returning with Matine, who he said was an even better horse. Although she’s never flown before, he wasn’t concerned about that aspect of the trip.

“She’s quite easy to travel with,” said Helgstrand. “I’m looking forward to the ride. It was a super atmosphere last time.”     Sara Lieser