Friday, Dec. 6, 2024
Life’s a dance for Emily Arriaga.
The metaphor is more literal for her than most, as she has been dancing since age 4 and has her sights set on a career as a professional, and because she’s learned over her life to balance that passion with her passion for horses, which she also hopes to make part of her career.
Arriaga began riding at age 8, tagging along when her 6-year-old brother Casey, now also an up-and-coming junior rider himself, asked for a riding lesson as a birthday present. Now a freshman at the Savannah College of Art and Design (Georgia), she recently was awarded a $1,000 U.S. Equestrian Federation Higher Education scholarship as she pursues a major in equestrian studies and minor in musical theater with hopes of being able to pursue both of her passions professionally after she graduates.
“I couldn’t ignore the fact that [SCAD] was the most obvious choice that aligned with my future career path, so I’m glad I chose it,” Arriaga said.
She and her brother hope to operate a training, sales and show barn together some day, with Casey dedicated to the horses and Emily splitting time between horses and dance, just as she always has.
“Part of the reason why I’m really eager about doing this with my brother is because I also want to continue dancing professionally,” she said. “Throughout my whole life, dance and horseback riding have shared time, and I honestly just plan to keep doing that.
“If [we] are successful and we do create a barn together,” she continued, “then that would give me the flexibility to leave for certain periods of time or go pursue other jobs within the dance world.”
The two siblings started riding together and progressed up the ranks, from 4-H to competing at USEF Pony Finals (Kentucky), before she switched to the jumpers, competing up to 1 meter, and Casey to the jumpers and equitation. Riding, she said, has taught her about perseverance.
“Not even just in horses, but also in dance, it is so important to learn how to lose,” she said. “It doesn’t matter that you lost. It matters what you do with the loss. If you cry and you complain and you blame other people, or if you suck it up and turn that feeling that you got into motivation and determination to keep going and get better.”
While her brother currently takes his high school classes online and travels to horse shows much of the year, Emily has continued riding but generally stays closer to home due to dance commitments.
“I love dancing to music, and I love the artistry and the perfectionism of being a dancer and taking it seriously, and the discipline aspect of it… just everything about it really ignites passion in me,” said Emily, whose dance resume includes everything from tap and ballet to contemporary, acro and ballroom.
She credits her diverse skills to not only dancing and competing from such a young age, but also to dance conventions she has attended over the years.
“Whether that means Broadway or on a camera, I just want to do any and all of it,” she said.
Growing up as an athlete focused on both competitive dance and riding pony hunters, early in life the 19-year-old developed an approach to the two sports—both of which are subjectively judged—that fellow riders twice her age could benefit from absorbing:
“You have to be confident in yourself, even when you lose, to know that’s not the point at which you give up,” she said. “And you have to be able to walk out knowing that you’re still a hard worker, you’re still a dancer, you still are deserving of space in any room you walk into, and just because someone that you put yourself in front of and gave yourself up to be judged by, just because they didn’t recognize that, doesn’t actually have anything to do with your self-worth.”
Excelling in both dance and equestrian sport has taken “a lot of sacrifice” from her family, Emily acknowledged. Dance competitions and horse shows alike are generally states and flights away. While her dad is usually the parent at the horse shows, her mom is the “dance queen,” she said.
Having two passions as time-consuming as dance and horses has forced Emily to choose one over the other in the past, but if at all possible, she tries to do both rather than picking one.
“There were times when I had a recital on a weekend, but there was also a horse show on that weekend,” Emily said. “And sometimes I was able to make it work, go and do my rounds and then jump off, get in the car and make it to the [dance] show. But there were also times when I was sitting at the in-gate realizing that the ring wasn’t going to go any faster, and I had to get off now if I wanted to make it to the recital on time.”
As Emily has kept her dual focus, Casey has honed in on his riding, becoming a working student for Kyla Makhloghi’s Rosemont Farms in 2023.
“I would say that’s when we started expanding the most, because he got to go to Florida and learn new things,” Emily said. “I feel like, since we were able to separate and have two different paths of learning more recently, we kind of round each other out better.”
Casey now competes in 1.10-meter jumper and 3’3” equitation classes, recently closing out the 2024 season at Capital Challenge (Maryland) and the National Horse Show (Kentucky) on Rosemont’s sale horses. When he is out of the saddle, he can be found in the stable grooming, caring for client horses or helping young child riders get their ponies ready to show. He plans to become a professional soon after aging out of his junior career, and eventually join his sister in starting an equestrian business together.
“Putting the work in and then watching the development, even in somebody else’s animal or somebody else’s career, … it’s super rewarding knowing that you helped with that,” Casey said. “And you know, if I started a business with my sister, I think it would be helpful to have her as a business partner and kind of doing the logistics side of it, because she’s really smart.”
Two siblings local to the Arriagas’ hometown of Bahama, North Carolina, Laura Gaither Ulrich and Christina Gaither Webb, run Fox View Farm together and have served as an encouraging example of the type of business Casey and Emily want to have one day.
“Watching them be professionals and obviously excel at what they do has been pretty inspiring to us,” Emily said. “I kind of feel like I want to follow in their footsteps, just building a business together…showing, training, buying, reselling.”
To that end, Emily is taking equestrian studies classes at SCAD that cover competition design, stable design, judging and more.
“Classes like that I can’t wait to take because I’m assuming that they’ll have great substance to be really valuable towards actually doing what I want to do,” she said. “I am very set and determined on getting the best possible foundation I can to help me step into the real professional world.”
She is also interested in eco-friendly stable management and is learning more about that at SCAD.
“It goes hand in hand with ideal horse care in my mind,” she said. “When it comes time for me to actually buy or build a barn, that’s going to be one of the factors that matters most to me is, ‘Can I turn this into something that’s going to be healthy for the environment and the horses and be an example for the professional world?’ ”
After competing in Interscholastic Equestrian Association during high school, where she was also her class’s valedictorian, Emily now rides in the limit division for SCAD’s Intercollegiate Horse Show Association team under coach Ashley Henry.
“I’m sure she does get tired and burnt out, but … she doesn’t show that very often,” Casey said. “I think she just has a strong work ethic and she just keeps going even when things are hard, whether it’s dance or school or horses, and I think that’s really admirable.”
Now, the dancer and rider is applying her work ethic toward realizing a double career.
“I spent my whole life doing horses and dance, and I want to continue doing that,” Emily said. “If I just chase after it, who’s to say that I can’t make it happen?”
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