Dancing Horses

The dance remains a tradition of celebrating festivities

Islamabad: Once considered a symbol of royalty and confined to the celebrations and festivities of the elite and feudal class, the rare dancing horses are no rarer and one can see the horses dancing to the tunes of traditional Dhol (drums) and Shahnayi (a type of flute) at middle-class weddings.

Once the dancing horses were kept only by the affluent class but with time many others jumped in and took it up as a profession to run their livelihood. They offer these horses for weddings and other festivities. Mohammad Suleman is an event organiser in Islamabad. “You can have a horse dance show by paying seven to eight thousand rupees,” Suleman informed.

Malik Azhar Hayat, a landlord of Karla Estate near Shahpur, said that the tradition of horse-dancing is quite old but no one exactly knows how and when it all started in the sub-continent.

Horse dancing is popular all over the world and people like to see this elegant animal hop to the tune of music. People in China, Central Asia, Arab countries, England and other parts of the world train horses to dance but their style is different. Even in Olympics, there is a game where a rider makes his horse move symmetrically on various musical rhythms. He said earlier the horse dance, tent-pegging and races of oxen and camels were confined to festivals and traditional horse and cattle shows were also organized in various parts of the country.

One can see beautiful black, white and brown horses standing on Murree Road near Mahrir Hassan offering these elegant horse dances on payment. When asked, Ahmad Khokar standing with a beautiful black horse informed, “We can do a function for Rs 8000 in a nearby locality and if someone wants us to go out of town then they would charge an extra three to four thousand rupees as transportation cost of the animals to the venue.” Giving the details of the package Khokar informed that they would bring two horses, two Dhol beaters and a Shahnayi player. “Due to a lot of people coming into the business we have to bring down charges for the horse dance. Otherwise, we used to charge 15 to 20 thousand rupees for an event which they are offering for Rs 8000 now,” he added.

Khokar is now happy with the way things are and said, “Due to unprecedented escalation in cost of living people have curtailed extra spending on marriages and other such festivities as such their business is on the decline. While on the other hand, the cost of keeping horses in cities has also witnessed an abnormal increase making it difficult for us to meet both ends.”

Another horse dance master Khurram Shahzad was even prepared for doing an event for Rs 7000 in city limits while for Rs 10,000 on the outskirts of the city. He was also complaining about the declining trend of hiring their services due to growing inflation.

Khurram Shahzad said that for the past week they had not done even a single event but they had to feed their two horses and a group of people associated with him. “We need to give a good diet to horses as we have to keep them healthy and strong as for horses, dance is a tough job and only a strong and healthy horse can do it, “ he explained, adding that daily they require 500 to 600 rupees to feed one horse.

Ahmad Khokar informed that training a horse for dancing is a long and tedious job and it takes five to six years to fully train a horse to do different types of dances. He further said that all horses could be trained for dancing but the local breed of horses found in this region, mainly a crossbreed of central Asian and Arabian horses, are good at learning the dancing skills.

Malik Azhar Hayat also agreed that the local breed of horses was quite intelligent and quickly learned dancing skills. But the thoroughbred horses and even Arabian breeds were equally good at learning dancing skills. But the people normally go for local breeds of horses only because their prices are far less than the English thoroughbred horses.