22 SIDELINES AUGUST 2014
FOR HORSE PEOPLE • ABOUT HORSE PEOPLE
Continued on page 24
By Sue Weakley
Dressage guru Jane Savoie is known for dancing with horses
having won three National Freestyle Championships, but now
she’s branched out into another form of dancing: competitive
ballroom.
She took it up two years ago and now, at age 65, Jane is the
poster child for maintaining an active lifestyle.
“I think that it’s so important for people to not feel like, ‘OK. I’ve
just gotten my Medicare card. How could I possibly start a new
adventure like this? Especially one so physical?’” she said. “I think
it’s encouraging for people who are in my age group who maybe
have stopped dreaming a
little bit to realize that there’s
no expiration date on having
a dream and going for it
and staying fit and staying
vibrant.”
Jane is no neophyte when
it comes to staying busy.
She has been a member of
the United States Equestrian
Team
and
competed
for the U.S. in Canada,
Holland, Belgium, France
and Germany. She was the
Olympic dressage coach
for the Canadian Three-
Day Event Team for the
1996 Atlanta and the 2014
Athens Olympic Games. She
also coached several top
dressage and three-day event riders in their preparations for the
2000 Sydney Olympic Games and, while in Sydney, she helped
rider Susan Blinks secure a bronze medal for the U.S. dressage
team. She has written five books and has collaborated on eight
more.
And then she started dancing.
“This started a couple of years ago when I was at an expo in
Virginia and I was talking to someone who came by my booth,”
she explained. “I said it was on my bucket list to be in Las Vegas
as a showgirl for a week. I thought that would be really fun to be a
senior citizen showgirl. I’ll train for a week and they can put me at
the end of a chorus line and they can hide me behind a palm tree.
Then this person said, ‘You
really should be on
Dancing
With the Stars
.’”
That got Jane thinking
and with that in mind, she
started dancing lessons.
“I got completely and
totally addicted to it,” she
said. “It’s so much like
dressage. The parallels
are always freaky. The
contact and the connection
and the power coming from
the standing leg and not
the moving leg. Collection.
Engagement. The parallels
are so crazy.“
She added that she
e
Dressage
Jane Savoie Waltzes from
Dressage to Ballroom Dancing
Jane and Moshi dancing
Photo by Liz Ritz
Jane riding Moshi with a side-by-side comparison of Jane dancing. The
lateral leg pairs are identical.
All photos by Rhett Savoie, unless noted otherwise
