JoAnna Mendl Shaw, right, guides Claudia Lauista while they danced with Rambuka, a Danish Warmblood owned by Louise Levesque and her husband, Louis Talarico, to the music of Jaime Sieber at the Double L Farm in New Gloucester on Saturday as a part of the final day of the Bates Dance Festival. “This was my first time doing this,” said Lauista, a dancer and choreographer from Mazatlan, Mexico. “It was a tremendous communication experience.” Mendl Shaw works extensively with the organization The Equus Project, which is a nonprofit dance company out of New York that brings together professional dancers with horses and their riders to create performance works that merge the artistry of dance with the athletics of equestrianism. Go to www.sunjournal.com for an audio show of the performance.

Amber Waterman/Sun Journal photo