Paul Belasik DVD anyone?

I reviewed it thus, Maria:

Paul Belasik ‘s new DVD ‘The Lost Quixotes’ covers the topic of the ‘Lost art of collection’, a timely subject in these days whereby the theme of modern dressage training seems to be moving further and further away from aiming at the highest levels of collection, especially through the disturbing training technique which has come to be known as ‘rollkur’.
Paul begins with an introduction to the concept of collection, and explains how the Renaissance school of Pignatelli in Italy, influenced the greatest riders of the day, sons of noblemen from all over Europe, including the Duke of Newcastle, spreading the knowledge, sowing the seeds of Classical horsemanship as we know it today.

Belasik then moves on to explain how the advent of dressage as competition in the 20th century, and particularly in the last few decades began to require bigger and faster movements, with the horse being more on the forehand than in the past. There had been research carried out using forceplates, to prove or disprove whether the horse did truly take the weight back in collection, using Grand Prix level horses of today. Unsurprisingly, it was proven that the weight was not taken back, with the exception of a few horses, who seemed to be the best balanced too. So was collection i.e, the taking of the weight back, also necessary for supreme balance?

Paul was greatly disturbed by these findings, as it overturned his training and beliefs of thirty years. He therefore asked Dr Hilary Clayton, if he could bring one of his own classically trained horses, the Thoroughbred, St Grail, to the McPhail Institute, using the same forceplates, to test the theories, when performing levade, with a classically trained horse, rather than one trained purely for competition.

To Belasik, proving that the horse pulled himself up into levade, transferring weight to the haunches, rather than pushing, was his aim. The forceplate experiments proved beyond a doubt, that it was the former rather than the latter, much to the relief of Belasik, who felt elated that his work of thirty years had been validated!

The only criticism is that the next – and longest- chapter of the DVD seems oddly mismatched to the rest of it. It is a discourse between Paul and an equine ethologist, Dr Kirkpatrick, about the behaviour of feral horses. I can see where Belasik is coming from, in that he is trying to emphasise how important the understanding of the nature of horses is, to good and humane training, but it seems out of place in a DVD which is otherwise solely about a single topic, that of collection.

Had he perhaps been showing how a wild stallion ‘collects’ naturally when showing off to a mare, or challenging another stallion, it would have made more sense. Having shown the DVD to several friends, all commented on the fact that this chapter seemed a little incongruous to the rest of the film, so if cannot just have been me!

But the rest of the film is fascinating, the work shown by Paul’s horses exemplary, and as anyone who has read Paul’s books would expect, the commentary is erudite and in depth, whilst still very easy to follow.

The only other criticism? That it is such an interesting and enormous subject, that it would warrant a whole series! I would love to see Paul expand this series with a really in depth look at whether or how, collection is developed and achieved, in a number of horses of different breeds and types.

Heather