Shortly before coaching the US dressage team in the 2012 London Olympics, Michael Barisone horsed around with Stephen Colbert at his equestrian center in New Jersey.

Colbert, clad in a cowboy outfit, paid the former Olympian a visit at the Hawthorne Farm in bucolic Morris County in a quest to prove that dressage is for the average “Joe Sixpack.”

In a tongue-in-cheek, taped appearance on “The Colbert Report,” Barisone described the finer points of dressage, an artsy Olympic sport since the 1912 games in Stockholm.

“A horse has three basic gaits — a walk, a trot and a canter,” Barisone explained. “We develop to their highest level their ability within those gaits.

“Eventually, at the Olympic level, we put it to music and ride the free style, which is much like the free skate in figure skating,” he added.

Colbert, whose goal was to be awarded a dressage tiara, asked: “How do you get the skates on the horse?”

He then went on to suggest changes to the sport — including horse mosh pits and “dirty dancing” — before taking the reins of a horse named Conchita to learn about piaffing (“fancy prancing”) and passage (“horsey walking sideways”).

“Should I be wearing a cup? Because I am not,” he asked Barisone. “I think I piaffed a little. I might need a towel.”

Barisone, 54, a member of the 2008 Beijing Summer Games squad, stands accused of shooting fellow equestrian Lauren Kanarek on Wednesday after a confrontation with her and her fiancé.