CLASSICAL DRESSAGE EXPLAINED
Airs Above the Ground: Dressage's Levade and Capriole
Classical dressage's most demanding movements lift a horse off the ground entirely. Here's what levade, courbette and capriole involve, and where they survive.
See tickets for the Jerez equestrian ballet ↗What "airs above the ground" means
In classical dressage — sometimes called haute école — the airs above the ground are a small group of advanced movements in which the horse leaves the ground on its hind legs or leaps clear of it entirely, holding demanding positions that require years of progressive strength training. They sit outside modern competitive dressage altogether; you won't see them at an Olympic dressage test or in any everyday riding-club lesson. Their origins are usually traced to cavalry and riding-academy training, where the same strength and obedience needed to hold these positions had practical value in mounted combat and tight battlefield manoeuvring centuries ago.
The levade
The levade is the foundation movement of the group: the horse draws its forelegs in and balances its whole weight on deeply bent hind legs, holding the body at roughly a 45-degree angle to the ground for several seconds at a time. It looks almost still to an audience, but it's one of the most physically demanding positions a horse can be asked to hold — it requires exceptional strength through the hindquarters and complete trust between horse and rider, since the horse has to accept being balanced right on the edge of falling backward without panicking or shifting its weight.
The courbette
From a levade-like starting position, the courbette adds motion: the horse hops forward several times on its hind legs alone, forelegs tucked and held off the ground throughout the whole sequence, rather than dropping the front end down to reset between hops as in an ordinary rear. It's often described as the horse "jumping" without its front legs ever touching down, and it demonstrates a level of hindquarter power, balance and sustained muscular control that takes years of progressive, carefully graded training to build safely without injuring the horse's back or hind legs along the way.
The capriole
The capriole is the most dramatic of the airs: the horse leaps fully into the air, tucks its forelegs in toward its chest at the peak of the jump, and kicks out sharply with both hind legs before landing squarely back on all four feet. Historically, it's associated with a horse's supposed ability to defend a mounted rider by striking out at attackers on the ground with its hind legs — whether or not that was ever a literal, regularly used battlefield tactic, it's the story most classical riding academies still tell today to explain the movement's original military purpose.
Where these movements are still performed
Only a handful of institutions worldwide train and perform these movements at all, and each does it slightly differently, shaped by the breed of horse it works with and the military or courtly tradition it grew out of. Vienna's Spanish Riding School remains the movements' best-known home, built around Lipizzaners bred and trained specifically for haute école work, with Saumur's Cadre Noir preserving a parallel French tradition. The Royal Andalusian School in Jerez trains a different repertoire: its public programme centres on classical dressage and doma vaquera, the Spanish working-horse style, rather than the airs above the ground, so visitors should not expect to see levade, courbette or capriole performed there.
| Academy | Horses used | Where it fits in |
|---|---|---|
| Spanish Riding School, Vienna | Lipizzaner | The best-known home of the airs above the ground, performed as part of a formal classical programme |
| Cadre Noir, Saumur (France) | Selle Français and other French breeds | A military-rooted French academy preserving its own classical riding tradition |
| Royal Andalusian School, Jerez | PRE / Andalusian | Its public programme centres on classical dressage and doma vaquera; the airs above the ground are not part of the show |
Why they've survived as performance, not sport
Airs above the ground disappeared from mainstream riding once cavalry stopped being decided on horseback, but a small number of classical academies kept training them anyway, as living heritage rather than letting the skill lapse entirely with the horses that once knew it. That's why they're framed today as art and tradition rather than competition — no scoring system rewards them, and no modern horse sport actually requires a horse to learn them. Seeing them performed is, in effect, watching a centuries-old military training exercise preserved purely because a handful of institutions like the Royal School chose to keep it alive for its own sake.
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