California Quadrille Third Annual Clinic

The California Quadrille Association held their third annual Quadrille Clinic this past weekend at Osierlea in San Juan Bautista, CA.  Clinicians Barbi Breen-Gurley and Alexsandra Howard were featured with Peter Lert and Elizabeth Searle as the Judges for the Competition Clinic.

 Friday evening there was a pot-luck dinner for all participants.  Sandy Howard gave a presentation on quadrille musical freestyles.  The presentation included such topics as types of music, tempo and suitability.  There was a lively discussion of team appearance and the overall visual impression of a performance.

 Saturday morning began bright and early with Liz Searle addressing the group on what the judge is looking for in the collective marks.  There were a lot of questions from the participants who really seemed to want to “pick the brains” of the experts!  Liz’s presentation was followed by Barbi Breen-Gurley giving a presentation on “Enlightened Riding”.  Barbi talked about how important visualization can be to improving our riding skills in a focused, relaxed manner.  She then played a visualization DVD she produced for quadrille.  After the soothing effects of the DVD, the teams were relaxed and eager to begin their day.

 Five teams participated in the clinic with some of the people coming from as far away as San Diego.  There was the Golden Hills Pony Club participating at Introductory Level and a team from American Sport Horse, also at the Introductory Level.  The California Mixers worked at the Preliminary Level (1^st).  There were two groups that came together just for the clinic.  This diverse group of individuals had such a strong desire to participate in quadrille that they were willing to form their teams during the clinic.  Individuals from San Diego, Watsonville and Los Osos came together in a Preliminary team and an Introductory team.  It was amazing how cohesive these groups became by the end of the clinic.

Each team worked a session in the morning with the instructors and then had another session in the afternoon with the other instructor.  Groups worked on the three primary parts of quadrille, Synchrony, Spacing and Alignment.  Each instructor brought a different perspective to the teams along with diverse teaching styles.  The more seasoned teams had the opportunity to work on freestyles getting invaluable input from both instructors.  By the end of a very demanding day, the teams were ready for the Competition portion of the clinic to begin on Sunday.

 Sunday morning the teams were coached by their instructors before going in the arena to face the judges.  Golden Hills Pony club presented an Introductory Level freestyle, showing their pony’s precision in performing the movements.  At the end of each ride, the teams, along with their coach, were allowed to talk with the judges and gain valuable insight into how they might improve their ride.

 At the end of the quadrille portion of the Competition Clinic, their were individual riders given the same opportunity to ride a test and then have Liz and Peter evaluate their ride and give them some pointers for the upcoming show season.

 The clinic was very successful and we hope all quadrille teams and individual riders came away feeling it was worth their while to participate.

 CQA  would once again like to thank our clinicians who worked so hard with each team .  Our sincere gratitude also goes to Peter Lert, Elizabeth Searle, all those at Osierlea and our volunteers for making this our most successful clinic yet.

For additional information on quadrille or the upcoming California Quadrille Championship and Central Coast Dressage Classic, contact Bonni Kelley, Executive Director at neptunefarm@earthlink.net.