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Welcome to Gaynor's Dancing Horses Tour

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CANCER RESEARCH UK PRESS RELEASE
CANCER RESEARCH UK PRESS RELEASE

GAYNOR’S DANCING HORSES TO MUSIC ARENA TOUR
IN AID OF CANCER RESEARCH
PRESS RELEASE
Gaynor’s Dancing Horses Arena Tour is a staggeringly beautiful show that is raising money for Cancer Research UK. The Gaynor’s Dancing Horses team is performing an exciting show, with a unique series of horses of all breeds and levels performing to LIVE music. Gaynor - a professional session musician - plays live, surrounded by keyboards in the arena.
The tour has dates at 7 leading arenas in England and Wales. The team includes 36 horses with 31 riders, Gaynor Colbourn - the co-inventor of the sport Dressage to Music - and a support team. The Gaynor’s Dancing Horses team are giving their time and expertise in order to raise as much funding as they can for the Cancer Research UK charity.
In the UK, roughly 400,000 people are diagnosed with cancer each year. Not every cancer cell in a tumour will have the same genetic mutations as a neighbouring cancer cell. That means that treatments can often kill one type of cell in a tumour, while other cells survive the treatment, allowing the tumour to grow again. Ongoing research is critical to understand more about best treatment. Cancer Research UK dedicates themselves to saving lives through research, influence, and information. They fund scientists, doctors, and nurses to help beat cancer, and provide cancer information to the public.
The show is an amazing experience, do come and help the Gaynor’s Dancing Horses team raise money to help Cancer Research UK save lives.
Tour dates include:
• 26 March 2025, Kelsall Hill Equestrian Centre
• 11 April 2025, Hartpury Equine Arena
• 19 April 2025, Merrist Wood
• 9 May 2025, Unicorn Centre
• 28 May 2025, Arena UK
• 14 June 2025, Bury Farm Arena
• 5 July 2025, Pencoed Arena
TICKETS https://www.liveitequestrian.co.uk/event-list

Gaynor's Dancing Horses Show

Gaynor's Dancing Horses Show
Gaynor's Dancing Horses Show
The Show This 2 hour show is conceived from my lifetime career as a composer for Film, TV and Musical Theatre, mixed in with my skills as a performing musician and a Grand Prix rider. I find that traditional Dressage to Music demonstrations do not have the excitement, drama and creativity I crave. I really do mix my two worlds together, as I did at that very first performance Jennie and I did. I composed an Overture - as I have done for the eclectic team of Gaynor’s Dancing Horses - the arena was in darkness, the haunting music started to set the scene, filling the arena, then the spot light came on, and Jennie passaged in on Dutch Courage. This time, with Gaynor’s Dancing Horses, a new very haunting, then dramatic overture will start the show. We will still be in darkness and 3 Grand Prix horses covered in LED Lights and fluorescent white boots come in side by side in passage, literally glowing. The audience are drawn in by the haunting, powerful music while they perform passage, canter fans, and piaffe in unison for 2 minutes to the overture. Then still in the dark, the whole cast come on: I am playing live and the whole team of horses, all lit up, 4 more in a red arrow formation in passage, flanked by the remaining horses in collected trot. They all line up on the centre line, pirouette in unison to face the audience. Only when they have turned to face the audience do the lights come on. That’s just the start. The whole show is just as exciting, with longer pieces, and variety. Working Equitation, Side-Saddle in Costume, Spanish Pairs in Costume are all part of the repertoire. Having both composed and played for Musical Theatre, Ballet and Modern Dance, it was always my vision to create a performance for horses of all levels in the narrative. Horses can tell a story just as much as Ballet, Modern Dance, and with the story telling and drama of Musical Theatre. The Cauldrons and Furnaces performance I composed and performed in the grounds of the Bishops Palace, St Davids, has visual elements which we can translate into our Finale. Again, this involves using the drama of darkness and lit-up horses, with the addition of the costume which will both radiate and reflect the light. This is pure spectacle when with the Grand Prix, PSG, Advanced Medium, Medium, Elementary and Novice horses all playing their part. There is so much emotion and drama, all set to live music. We function as one big team: everyone has a speciality which they bring into the team, whether it is riding, costumes or arena party – and of course music. This creation works. We now work together with a shared passion and vision.

Team

horse
1. Gaynor Colbourn
Role:  
Founder

In October 1980, Olympic rider Jennie Loriston Clarke met Gaynor Colbourn who, at the age of 17, was already an established classical and session musician, composer and multi-instrumentalist in the recording and TV/film industry. Their first collaboration was a demonstration of dressage to music at Wellington Riding in Heckfield, UK, in which Colbourn played keyboards live in the arena to match every single movement of Loriston-Clarke riding Dutch Courage and Benjamin Bunny. The demonstration also featured a pas de deux with Jeremy Michaels and Neirede Goodman, the co-owner of Wellington Riding who rode Wellington Oliver. This event marked the beginnings of dressage to music and Colbourn's trademark style of playing keyboards live in order to match every movement, tempo, change and nuance, wherefore she was awarded the Merle Park Rose Bowl Award at the Goodwood International Dressage Festival. Freestyle to Music was officially recognised by British Dressage in 1980 and the FEI after its official debut at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and has since grown. Not only is it compulsory in equestrian Olympic competitions, but it has spread beyond the grand prix circuit to freestyle classes at local riding club competitions around the world and at all levels. As a multi-instrumentalist, for competition music, Gaynor plays and records all instruments from scratch, making her music both unique and accurate to every nuance and dynamic. Her music is always beautiful, so scores highly for artistic and music content. Gaynor Colbourn, who rides and trains to Grand Prix level, remains the only person to have performed live music alongside the horses, which allowed her to tailor music to each individual rider and horse. She continues to lead clinics and demonstrations including performances by top international and Olympic riders, but creates music for horses and riders at all levels, which have won freestyle classes more than 11,522 times with Colbourn's music. When playing in concert, or Dressage to Music Demos, Gaynor has used KORG Keyboards for over 30 years.

horse
Alanna Clarke

Alanna is a 22yo law graduate currently working full time in a Leeds law firm and aiming to qualify as a solicitor. She looks after and competes her own three Trakehner dressage horses regularly and enjoys sharing their journeys on social media. She is also a member of the British Dressage Youth Panel and a 2025 National Academy athlete. Golden Girl IlI is Alanna's 16yo Trakehner mare, who despite being tiny has a huge heart. Ella, as she's known at home, recently made the step up to Advanced Medium, qualifying for the Pet Plan Winter Championships at Addington at her first try! Ella is also known as "The One-Eyed Wonder Pony" : she lost her eye to uveitis three years ago, and since taking a long time out of work she's coming back better than ever. Alanna's goal is to compete her at PSG in the coming year.