CMU School of Drama


Monday, February 18, 2019

What it’s like to be a horse trainer at Medieval Times.

slate.com/business: Do you like horses? How about dancing horses? If those words sound fun to you, you’ll be delighted to meet Amanda Kenny, the head horse trainer at Medieval Times in Lyndhurst, New Jersey, where a surprisingly large chunk of the show focuses on elaborate dressage routines (that’s horse ballet, for you nonequestrians out there). Amanda tells Jordan what it’s like training steeds to jump and kick, training knights to ride, and dealing with the dirty side of the stables.

1 comment:

Annika Evens said...

I have to say that I never thought I would be listening to a podcast about a dressage trainer at a medieval time theatre piece. I have a friend that competes doing dressage so I have known a little bit about it for a couple years but I still learned so much from this article. I have never thought of horse dancing as something that would be used in a live performance, although it seems so obvious that it would be used because it is a performance. I also had no clue that dressage was in the Olympics, I would love to watch it during the next Olympics. I think the art of training these horses is beautiful. Amanda Kenny is doing so much work, she is training the baby horses while still caring for and training for the older horses who are the ones that perform in the show. This is also a dangerous job, she talked about how the horse kicked her and how she got bucked off of a horse. I love reading these articles about all of these different kinds of jobs in the arts.