What Makes Good Dance With a Partner?

A mutual feel for the music. For what music? For the music that is you and your horse as one. If we think of our horse as an instrument and ourselves as one, we can imagine that when the two are combined a new instrument is created. Simply by adding our weight and awkwardness we encumber the horse enough that he doesn't quite resonate the same as he did without us. Similarly, man without his horse becomes another man once mounted. Both horse and rider will need to discover their new beings in the relationship of partnership. Still, the horse knows he is a horse, and man, a man. Through partnership though, he adapts, remolds, reshapes.
Control and domination destroy the beauty of partnership. A great partnership is about leading and following in a way where togetherness remains.
Music with a horse goes beyond the resonating instruments and translates into music of motion where footsteps are the beat, posture accentuates the cadence and the melody is a sweet mutual cooperation that sings of joy and freedom.
One of my favorite dance partnerships is the iceskating pair Gordeeva and Grinkov. There was something about these two worth studying. Grinkov was large and strong but gentle and humble. The petite little Gordeeva was light and elegant in every way but with an energy of joy that brought real foundation to her small form. Together they were magic. The ways in which they interacted in dance was seamless and flawless because they shared. Sharing is giving and taking and when sharing happens in a regularity as in dance, the vision of the partnership is exquisite. To dance well, there needs to be a leader and follower. The follower is totally committed to this job of following for the sake of the partnership. The leader leads the follower securely, in a completely trustworthy manner, into his proper place in the dance. But in this partnership of Gordeeva and Grinkov, leader and follower switched places many times. It was a revolving union of individual roles. Sometimes the strong Grinkov would lead but then would hand the leadership baton over to the small Gordeeva for her to lead him for a while until she passed the baton back to him. It was breathtaking to watch this.
Our partnership with the horse could achieve this sort of greatness. The question is how much do we want this? How much of ourselves might we need to give up to have it? How patient must we be?