From Richard Flint

Anja Beran, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. The third (March) program of its annual winter show in Munich this year, Circus Krone featured the riding of Anja Beran, a young woman of 38 who is one of Europe's principal presenters and instructors of classic dressage. This was a rare occassion even for such a distinguished circus as Krone. She appeared on her Lusitano stallion Pao and with dancer Nicole Ciroth. To the sounds of West Side Story they presented piaffes, passages and the Spanish walk to enact the enchanting love story of Toni and Maria, as unique as the relationship between man and horse. Her website further explains that "the presentation in the arena, which has a size of only 13 m, very close to the audience and with many light effects, represented an enormous challenge for horse and horsewoman alike. The frequency of the shows – sometimes twice a day – also necessitated a great deal of discipline in order to maintain consistency in the performances. Another difficulty was a short ride-out phase in a very narrow space. Pao, however, managed extremely well." Since 2002 she has been running her own training farm (for horses and riders), Gut Rosenhof, in the mountains near Munich. At any one time she has about 40 stallions there for training from Germany and abroad. She is the author of a number of works advocating the longer, traditional methods of classic dressage training. And one aside: is it not true that one reason for the lack of outstanding horse acts is because shows, other than Big Apple, do not prepare a good dirt/sawdust ring for the long term benefit of the horses? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------