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January 2008 • VOLUME 29 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine
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M. BAUCHER'S
AIRS DE MANEGE.
Translation from
Monsieur Baucher's Methode d'Equitation," explaining the following
performances (called "Baucher's Seize Nouveaux Airs de Manege"), as
exhibited by him on his horses, "Partisan," "Capitaine," "Neptune," and
"Buridan." They are adapted only for the circus, but they are both
extraordinary and interesting, as they show to what extent the System may be
carried.
"Les etudes
premieres bien comprises conduiseut a l'erudition. Plus 1'esprit a de
consistance, plus il a de brillant et de justesse."
(Passe-temps
Equestres.)
Those who
systematically denied the efficacy of my" Methode," should have also denied its
results. But they were obliged to admit, together with the public, that my
performance at the "Cirque Olympique" was both new and extraordinary; though one
and all attributed the result to different causes, maintaining, of course, that
the rider's horsemanship was nothing compared to the sagacity displayed by the
horse.
According to some, I was a new Carter, taming my horses by
depriving them of rest and nourishment; others would have it that I tied ropes
to their legs, suspended them in mid-air, and then made their limbs play like
those of puppets; some, again, supposed that I fascinated them by the power of
the eye; and part of the audience, seeing the horses work in time to my friend
Monsieur Paul Cuzent's charming music, actually maintained, seriously, that the
horses had a capital "ear for music," and that they stopped at once with the
clarionets and trombones.
Thus music had more power over the horse than I
had - the beast obeyed an ut, or a sol, staccato, but my hands and legs
went for nothing!
Could any one imagine such nonsense emanating from
people who actually passed for horsemen!
I conceive perfectly that they
could not at once understand the means employed, because my "Methode" was new;
but, before passing judgment on it in such an extraordinary way, they should, I
think, have tried at least to make themselves acquainted with it.
I found
the old school of Equitation so limited, and its movements all so much alike,
that when you could do one, you could do them all. The rider who, on a straight
line at a walk, trot, and canter, could make the horse work with his hind legs
upon a parallel line to its fore, could, of course, work "Passage Shoulder In,"
Passage Shoulder Out," "Shoulder In," and perform the "Volles Ordinaires," or
"Renversees," "Change of Hand," &c., &c., &c. As for the
"Piaffer," it was supposed that nature alone decided that point.
This
long and tedious work had no variety but in the different names applied to its
movements; since it was sufficient to conquer the first difficulty to overcome
all the others.
I therefore invented some new "Airs de Manege"
(movements), the execution of which required the horse to be more supple, better
in hand, and to have more finish in his education than was formerly
necessary.
With my system, this was easy; and to convince my adversaries
that in my performance at the Circus there was neither mystery nor magic, I
shall explain by what means - purely equestrian - I brought the horses to
execute the sixteen "Airs de Manege" that appeared so wonderful, and this
without the assistance of pillars, cavessons, or whips.
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