The Curator, the Choreographer, the Horse and the Dance

A rigorous artistic process culminates in choreographer Marie Fahlin defending her doctoral thesis before, among others, dressage rider and contemporary art curator Joanna Sandell.

Horses in film and television neigh and grunt as they communicate with human counterparts. Connecting with a horse is not like this. To find the texture between human and horse is to sink into silent, energetic awareness. I was reminded of this in the tense silence that enveloped candidate Phd choreographer Marie Fahlin as she embarked on a gruelling five-hour defence of her artistic thesis Moving Through Choreography – Curating Choreography as an Artistic Practice.

The world of horses and riding is seldom loud and requires deep listening, concentration and quick reactions. Perhaps the magnitude of force and energy is what inspires film makers to reach for high-pitched neighs, deep grunts and thundering hooves. Horses respond to physical cues, imperceptible to all but the most experienced observers. Fahlin strikes me as a choreographer, able to unlock the physical intelligence of the exhibitors she works with (dancers are called exhibitors, Fahlin’s choice). Dance is also a language of movement, Fahlin chooses the metaphor of dressage as the aesthetic vehicle for her thesis.

The defence of an artistic research project follows the same ancient protocol as any academic defence. The form is strict, and Covid-19 restrictions on attendance and social distance only made proceedings more austere. Fahlin on one chair, I, serving as her opponent, on the other. A camera tracks the speaker. Fahlin is observed, her thinking is scrutinised. When I am done interviewing her she will face another set of questions by the examination committee. The practice of choreography, curating and art has to be put into words by Fahlin in front of the examination committee as well as an audience, both in the room and online. This requires intense concentration and a discerning mind.

Fahlin is not your usual curator, she is a choreographer and her choice of approaching horse riding in relation to curating could not be more contemporary – exploring contested aspects of European cultural heritage in a completely novel context through choreography and curating.

When I started riding dressage about forty years ago the practice was mainly taught by military staff, their horses often pushed to submission through brute force. We dismantled and put together our bridles in a fashion not very different from cleaning and reassembling a gun. Much has changed. More advanced studies in veterinary behavioural science show how horses perceive human cues in dressage bringing into scrutiny practices like tightly pulled nosebands and sharp double-bits. The keen and pervasive eye of mobile phone cameras and social media has helped push horse cruelty to the periphery. Today most dressage riders are civilians, and female riders are equally as successful as men.

Centauring, an exhibition at Marabouparken konsthall in Stockholm, was the closing act of several public presentations of Fahlin’s thesis. All of them played with concepts of dressage and language: Performing, writingriding, Geraderichten, and Anhlehnung(try reading them out aloud). Fahlin has also presented curated events like Manège, (also at Marabouparken) as part of her research leading up to the final thesis presentation. In Manège, she invites other artists, choreographers, poets, and writers to join, making Marabouparken an artistic laboratory charged with artistic explorations. Fahlin produced three books, appendix, which introduced the artistic research project, and Centauring – The Book, with texts and images mapping concepts and visualisations of the research. The third book, the artist’s book 7 riddikter was published in Swedish and also exhibited in Centauring.

On stage in Centauring at Marabouparken polished bridles hung in rows with heavy shiny bits and a slinky paper serpent created a path between stations of more equestrian tack and ink scribbles. The main public presentation of Fahlin’s artistic research, ONE – I leave the skin dead and dry shining light behind me, was cancelled due to Covid-19 restrictions and visitors to the art space encountered the work as a projection onto one of the walls. Surrounding the projection was a stage and dance floor for exhibitors and audience alike which also included elements like leather grease from the tack room and notes from the writer’s study. Those unfamiliar with dressage riding might have misinterpreted spurs, whips and bits as objects alluding to sexual play, a crude and simple interpretation that remains on the surface of the choreographed performances that speak more of collaboration, creative processes and allowing oneself to both become one with, and transform, tradition.

“Centauring” is a key concept of the artistic research and stems from the Greek mythological centaur, a four-legged creature with a human torso. The research project delves at its deepest into the art of riding. Dressage riding was seen more as an art form before it became a sport. In the classical sense dressage riding is a rigorous practice of constant movement towards an idealised concept of perfection, a practice of constant change and a striving towards belonging to and becoming one with the centre of balance of the horse.

Greek military commander Xenophone practised dressage around 400 BC, and already in his writing, aspects of centering mind and body in relation to the horse is a key element. Xenophone’s writing was rediscovered in Italy in the 16^th Century by riding scholar Federico Grisone who started a riding academy in Naples. The art of riding would develop further about a century later as it spread to royal courts around Spain, Germany, England and France. Dressage riding became an Olympic sport in the Stockholm Olympics of 1912, when only military officers were allowed to compete and it would officially remain in the male domain of the military until the year 1953 when both civilians and women were invited to compete.

In Moving through Choreography  – Curating Choreography as an Artistic Practice the female exhibitors, trace movements drawn from the world of dressage. It may seem as though the horse is absent, but for the rider herself when she sits on the horse the horse is not very visually present, the sensation is that of mass, movement, emotions, and anticipation. What is visible is the neck, the ears, and at times the curvature of the horse’s eye, perhaps its shoulder. The choreography that we experience is extremely focused on the many small details of dressage riding, that assembled together, make up the ride, the experience of ultimate energetic collection, of “centauring”.

The objects such as bits, saddles, leather grease and spurs are treated as objects of art in the space that Fahlin created for Centauring. There are gloves for handling them. They are hung as if in an art space of the current kind, without signs and taxonomies. They are also used in the performance, they are curated and come to life in movement, the way they do when used in dressage, and the way objects acquire new meanings when they are curated into an art space.

In dressage, the rider – and in some cases, although it is not the point, the horse too – performs a choreographed score through memory, being judged through the six main principles in the German Training Scale: rhythm, relaxation, connection, impulsion, straightness and collection. There are certain movements carried out at predetermined places in the arena, marked by lettering and alluded to by the abstraction of written language in the research project.

When riding horses, knowledge is accumulated through repetition and eventually through the ideal of collection by horse and rider in union. When riding young horses the cues used to find movement through repetition have yet to develop into a dynamic language. In Fahlin’s research the performers (or exhibitors) seem to move through “centauring” movements in the experience of “knowing and not-knowing, failures, overconfidence, clear-mindedness, cheating, evidence, being lost, vague insights and precise findings,” in her own words.

Writing – and the movement in writing and in reading writing – is a core tool and outcome in the artistic research, disseminated both in performances and in the books, appendix and Centauring – the Book. The image of the snake shedding its skin and slithering in light is one of the images juxtaposed with images of experiencing dressage riding and training. It serves the project as an image of coiled energy, rising through the individuals grappling with the elements of reaching a higher level of collection, a higher level of creativity, of understanding new aspects around moving through existence.

In Moving through Choreography – Curating Choreography as an Artistic Practice the material from the world of dressage informs not only artistic practice, exhibition-making, curating, choreography and writing, it moves aspects of all these domains into one, finding the straight rhythm, suspension, relaxed knowing and collection specific to all of these fields and fusing material and energy into one. In this way knowledge specific to all of these fields is brought forth into the public domain, giving us the possibility to experience this art intimately, which I would argue is the reason art exists and is the greatest of all tools in the swinging motion between doubt, fantasies, suggestions and knowing.

Fahlin Fahlin received a doctorate in choreography from Stockholm University of the Arts in April 2021.