CRAFTING reestyles F

By Anna Buffini and Collier Wimmer

How did you and Anna meet and how did you two start working together?

Collier - We met through my mother, Ashely Wimmer, who is also a dressage rider. My mom had the good luck of stabling with Anna at a show years ago, and a few months a�er, she introduced the two of us down in Wellington, Florida. Once I found out Anna was not only a BTS fan (A K-pop super group) but that her freestyle was also to BTS, I decided we were going to be friends. As for us working together, we’d been friends for a while, but then last fall Anna texted me that she needed a freestyle for Diva with the goal to take it to FEI Dressage World Cup Finals in Omaha, Nebraska. Anna - We met through Collier’s mom, who I was lucky enough to stable with one year in Wellington. Once we found out our mutual love for horses, BTS, & music, we became friends for life. We started working together when I was a li�le stuck with my Top Gun: Maverick freestyle in mid 2022 and she came in and brought my vision to life.

What is at the heart of Diva’s Top Gun: Maverick freestyle?

Collier - I’ve always been a fan of the movies, and like Anna, I saw Top Gun: Maverick several �mes and le� the theater crying a�er the first watch-through. The Top Gun score is so familiar and evoca�ve. The score from beginning to end tells this incredible story and so the ques�ons became, “how do we translate the feeling you get watching this in the theater into the freestyle arena?” and “how do we take that story and condense it down without losing the integrity of the movie?”

At the heart of this freestyle is a thunderously heroic and emo�onal story that mirrors the trajectory of the movie. From the opening sec�on to the final passage line our goal was to grab the audience and judges, pop them in that cockpit, and not let them go un�l Anna’s final halt. Anna and I both have personal a�achments to this score and these movies. My fiance is a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force (he’s a Goose doppleganger!), so I really wanted to create something that the pilot community could be proud of and that would be an amazing tribute for Anna to carry into compe��on, represen�ng the United States. Anna - There’s so much heart wrapped up in this freestyle, it’s unbelievable the journey it’s taken us on. I was so moved by Top Gun: Maverick and went on to see it seven or eight more �mes in theaters. I knew from the first viewing that it was going to be my freestyle. My grandfather was in the Air Force for his en�re career and this freestyle was the last thing I ever got to show him before he passed away last fall. I wanted to honor and represent him and all the men and women who have fought for the freedoms we have today which allow me to perform this freestyle and do what I love every day. Also, Collier’s fiance is a fighter pilot, so I knew she was the person who could really understand the heart of this freestyle and tell this special story through the music.

What is your working relationship and process? How do you two collaborate to create the final product?

Collier - Our working rela�onship is very close. Anna and I’s musical brain and the way we approach the work has a 90% overlap. It’s created such a great founda�on for our professional rela�onship. In order to make this freestyle the best we could, we created about 15 different versions, with the final being the one the audience saw at 2023 FEI Dressage World Cup Finals. With each version, there’s a lot of back and forth, emails, texts, FaceTime, and voice memos between us. Because we have such a solid founda�on, we’re able to give each other crea�ve space to try out different things out with the freestyle, pu�ng different sec�ons of songs to different movements and seeing how things flow. We’re also honest with each other. If either of us think something in the newest version isn’t fi�ng, we’re up front with each other about it. There were many hours where we would hop on video chat together and live edit. If you think about it, soundtracks have anywhere from 40 minutes up to two hours of music and whi�ling that down to a seamless five and a half minutes without losing the story takes an enormous amount of brainstorming and trial and error. I am truly blessed to partner with a rider that is so musically oriented. Anna has an incredible ap�tude for music and then pu�ng it all together made this freestyle so much fun to create.

Anna - Collier is one of the easiest people I’ve ever worked with. It’s very rare to find someone who makes you feel so heard. We’re both very musical, so it’s also quite collabora�ve every step of the way. We mostly work remotely through a ton of texts, videos, voice memos and FaceTime calls. We made countless versions but didn’t stop un�l it was totally perfect.