A capriole is a specific move in horsemanship or dressage where the horse leaps from the ground and kicks out her hind legs out (see video). The word originally referred to a dance move where, one assumes, the human kicked his or her legs into the air in similar fashion to the horse. The word is related to caper: to dance or jump about.
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Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) Student Writing Center has been putting "a word of the day" on our bulletin board for several years. Recently we decided to put the word on the web along with suitable definition. We hope you enjoy the SLCC Student Writing Center Word of the Day!
Primary Sources
- American Heritage Dictionary
- Merriam-Webster Dictionary
- Oxford American Dictionaries (availble as an Apple OS X widget)
- Oxford English Dictionary
- Wikipedia
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5 comments:
In a lecture given in Colorado two years ago by Paul Belasik, the world famous trainer of classical dressage, he explained that dressage and ballet have a common root--larger than that we have selected the French terms for both art forms. They began being seen as an art form during the Renaissance and they were performed in the same venues. Dressage was seen as ballet on horseback. If you watch an example of a Kur (german word for the musical freestyle) in dressage competition today, you'll see why. How appropriate that dance and dressage have some common terminology, then.
See this Youtube video of Andreas Helgstrand on Blue Hors Matine at the World Equestrian Sports Finals 2006 winning a silver medal in the Musical Freestyle (Kur).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKQgTiqhPbw
Oops, Edit that... WEG2006 Finals
That is good to know, Christie. In future references to ballet, I will give credit to horses first!
Thanks for the link, that is a beautiful horse.
OH! A small detail, but important to enthusiasts... as kind and politically correct as it is to use a female references equally in writing, to say "the horse kicks HER hind legs out..." is factually inaccurate. It is a fact that the Spanish Riding School of Vienna (and all others that I know of who perform airs above the ground) only use stallions (fertile males) for riding. It is said that mares don't have the required physical strength to perform airs above the ground such as the capriole, which are the end goal of classical dressage.
Ah I knew the Lipizaners (sp?) were all stallions, but I didn't know the entire horse-world was opposed to mares doing tricks. I guess sexism is cross-species, eh?
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