Dressage Dilemmas: ethics where sport and art collide

Competitive dressage is multidimensional. As a sport, dressage horses and riders are expected to perform and gain a competitive edge. As an art, dressage is subject to specific aesthetic evaluation. The best combinations are the ones who run the fastest or jump the highest They are the ones who are assessed as being right, good and beautiful. In competitive dressage, these qualities are considered to result from a particular balance of power expressed in a discourse of submission and control that excludes subservience or coercion. This “disciplinary aesthetic” of dressage can be considered an example of the techniques of discipline that Foucault describes in his account of postcorporeal power regimes. As such, the aesthetics of power in dressage raise important ethical questions. The most heated debates in dressage today center on two particular disciplinary techniques; hyperflexion of the horse’s neck (rollkur) and (more recently) restrictive nosebands. Drawing from research on bullfighting, the dressage rulebook and considerations from an academic equestrian, I demonstrate how these debates are not just ethical, they have attendant aesthetic dimensions. I conclude that sustainable dressage relies on the alignment of its athletic, aesthetic and ethical dimensions.