lost art
an ongoing art + archival project
freedom + play
a dance with gravity and being in the now
Over a year ago, I reluctantly thrust myself into an investigation into the sudden legitimate interest in
“Ski Ballet”*. This started when my father sent me an urgent text (post-Olympics) that informed me that
he had a reliable source telling him that “ballet skiing” is actually coming back.
Not so this time around. This was entirely unexpected and threw me off equilibrium. The influx of positivity and neutrality ironically created more anxiety for me than all the hate I had learned to avoid, deflect, and absorb over the years.
People in the comments tended to ask: “Does anyone still do this sport?”
Hello! I’m right here.
Many people wondered, “What happened to it and why haven’t they heard about this?” Umm… maybe it was the slow cultural and technological lag happening?
Some were still somewhat negative with assessments of what they saw or knew of it. This is both right and wrong.
Not so this time around. This was entirely unexpected and threw me off Outwardly it became something that was its antithesis. It appears to many like a clash of zany keywords such as puffy sleeve dancercise music video ski oddity lost art from an alt version of the 80’s that no one seems to remember. It provides adequate fast food style content every year on a multitude of media outlets for only a minute during winter.
However, from my experience - it is not that at all.
Just as Mike Russell explained in the New York Times article and in depth in his recent book “Winterdanse - The Misplaced Art of Snow Ballet” - he called it a “garish artificial flower”. Russell was one of the original leading figures in the sport and saw how the de-evolutionary competitive template and selling out for Olympic approval was its undoing. Most importantly though and this is where we both strongly agree;
-> the hidden essence of it is Positively Transformational <-
Therefore, it is of Cultural Value.
That is why I took it Underground.
To keep it Safe & Share it.
I recognize that everyone who lost the sport has a need for some sort of reconciliation with the past. For me, at the endpoint of it all, I can say that I was definitely the one at the edge of the precipice. There were a few standouts at the time (Elena Batalova RUS & Konrad Hilpert SUI - amazing skiers and artists) but I could see that they were clearly burned out on it all or did not display the willingness to adapt to handle a task such as this. The keys to what shaped the Art + Archival Project that I ultimately assumed were twofold.
1. I was fortunate to be able to step away from the drama of it all.
2. I recognized the underlying problem with competition in Western minded sports:
If it wasn’t required to make the podium - why do it at all?
After competing at the Nagano World Championships in 1997 on a course prepared by the host organizing committee for our Olympic Debut (Lillehammer had built one too - they were both perfect by the way) - I had a mental breakdown and left the sport. This break from the unhealthy patterns accumulated
in competitive life (17 years of my life immersed in this) which had taken root as a young boy, was eye opening to say the least.
I had left the sport to move on with my life but somehow I got sucked back into it. It happened accidentally when I switched my academic career path and became a Studio Art Major at UVM. Through this I then fully embraced the artistic process without reading the fine print. My newfound tools of expression and responsibilities as an artist now included the practice of consistently keeping a journal/sketchbook.
In 1998 I returned for the last two seasons with renewed purpose, an open mind, and leveled-up with lots of new skills in dance, martial arts, and design strategy.
The demise of the sport was partially a result of the competitor’s complacency through performingoft-recycled programs and/or movement sequences year after year. Athletes and many artists are caught in a never-ending vicious cycle of training and production that keeps them bound to the wheel. Again, I was fortunate enough to break that cycle and also unfortunate in some ways to go back to it.
Russell just doesn’t know anything about how it ended because to him and many others of a certain age (Hotdoggers & Baby Boomers) everything post-retirement is not of value to consider. They also have a cushion in the form of closure on their own terms. Here is my response to this attitude, to my peers & to the enigmatic Mike Russell:
I never stopped innovating and moving forward.
I was forced into retirement.
I accept this reality and yet resist it.
I am done when I say I am done.
How can I find meaning in this and help others?
A page out of my journal/sketchbook with a view from my balcony in the village of
Zermatt. The most inspiring place I have ever skied. One day before I decided to take on
my task.
In October of 1999 at my last US Freestyle Ski Team Camp in Zermatt Switzerland, I made an agreement with myself in the cemetery on the edge of the village. After contemplating the consequences and considering others who might assist, I concluded my soul searching in the pages of my journal by holding myself alone responsible for what remained of “ski ballet” in practice.
The next few months became a crash course in receiving the basics that would sustain me in what was to come. I told myself over and over during that final season “Ski Ballet had to die - so it could live again” or “It will come back - but not the way it was.” Unknowingly I became a vanguard of sorts living with an underground vision and mission in the blurred area between sport & art.
Why would I do all of this?
It just doesn't make sense to most people. Moving on to other experiences in life made sense. It also made sense to have a distraction from the bitter feelings at the end of it all. I was able to do
this outwardly but the nagging clincher that kept me going with it was that I had established a new relationship to it as an art form.
When you have a deep relationship with an art form - it is not something that you walk away from. It can be a lifelong endeavor. However, to sustain this requires nurturing, patience, synthesis, and meticulous editing; all the while monitoring blips in popular culture. I will also sprinkle in having a high degree of reckless certainty of resolution.
Who am I to make a claim to this task?
At the very end of the timeline - I happened to be there with this renewed mindset of preserving it as an art form. Winning did not matter. Most or all of my peers had either fled or were simply phoning it in while coasting the last few kilometers of the ride we were on. Not me.
Key thing to point out here - I kept the energy of the active practitioner on stage bottled up directly from the source. I was connected to that energy being one of a few remaining competitors during the last season (1999-2000).
For my final performance at the last FIS World Cup event in Italy - I changed my program last minute in order to deliver a personal statement of resistance. I collected this rarified energy and snuck away with it while no one noticed. That was the plan I hatched in that cemetery in Switzerland and it worked. All of it. No one else did that.
How did I establish the practice of keeping it?
At the time I was practicing it and reinventing it constantly. What was crazy was that I kept going past Y2K. Back in Vermont during the 2001 season I logged in over 100 days of “ski ballet training”. This came immediately after basically being banished from the world of skiing. I kept up the same levels of output but with an intention of preserving the good parts of it. I went full throttle ahead as if nothing happened while accruing relevant notes and sketches. This necessary transitionary period of concentrated athletic pressure while exploring with an alternative artistic approach has provided ample thrust for the journey.
That is how I claim temporary stewardship over this in case anyone were to ask. I stand by my claims no matter how I sound in doing so. I am aware of how it will be received by some. The goal in mind is to give it back in a contemporary form that will have legs. It is not just a rehash of nostalgia or affixed to the stigmatizing labels of a crumbling dominant culture. It was part of my job to move beyond these attributes.
Another part of the conditions in my responsibility was to check in every few years to look at the cultural conditions to assess a possible relaunch opportunity. This was predicated upon certain situational moments arising along the way where I could make assessments of veracity of progress and validity of timing.
Over time I have edited out most of the former “sport-rules-based” elements/requirements. The challenge was deconstructing it down to a basic form that could be rebuilt into an accessible format to the public. Design thinking provided the means to achieve a workable rebuild and it did not care anything about the past. All the big tricks and flashy moves are now categorized into a “lost art” compartment and not approached in the way I choose to present it. This design choice leaves me with hardly any feeling of kinship with those who want to bring it back.
Several times over the years I repackaged it and deemed it ripe for relaunch without much outward success. I learned the hard way that the insiders in the ski industry have no use for it in teaching or as a tool in competitive excellence. Again, if the rules don’t require it - it has no use. A big barrier through this was that the stigma of the name had to fade away over a relatively long time. People always judged it negatively when it was labeled as what it was.**
** I felt that I was suddenly deemed less of a “man” by most people’s reactions upon hearing I was a former “Ballet Skier”. Part of my artistic approach nowadays is in examining the roles of gender in sport through the lens of a “Ballet Skier”. Academics in Sport Sociology Research have also been blinded to this “lost art” and could benefit from a critical re-evaluation in my opinion.
I learned through each failure and kept iterating, redesigning and packaging it into a form that will live on. My biggest effort so far came through the support of my best friends (Carlyn, David, & Stephen) in NYC who worked with me in prototyping a curriculum and artistic format. This next iteration became a walk on fire of sorts that reconfigured my preconceived notions of who, how, and why.
Carlyn practicing “Safety” - The Slopefriend Sessions at Mountain Creek NJ - 2018 - Day 2 of 3
In order to have a shot at getting it right, I had to let go of everything I knew about me and the world I inhabited - otherwise I’d have to give it all up. Seriously. Everything I was doing so far seemed to go nowhere and it was taking a toll on my life in so many ways. Just ask my family and friends.
So I made the leap.
To my surprise ->
It
actually
worked.
The answer to my leap of faith came as I was playing around in a dance oriented warm up - listening to a 90’s Hip Hop mix while night skiing on a “bunny” slope in the Berkshires. Out of nowhere it came like a lightning bolt.
What it is can be described as a reverse engineered “ski ballet trick” from the repertoire scrap heap. We called it “Safety” in the test group. It became the key for me moving forward to help people learn to ski without relying on any damaging aspect of the dominant culture. I found that I could get an absolute beginner to safely, proficiently and confidently ski an intermediate slope in one day in a completely new culture that consciously filtered out all the bad juju.
This method also delivered easy access to the art form (formerly known as ski ballet) to people without them even knowing it.
The irony is not lost on me at all. It’s actually very funny. No one else would ever arrive at this very simple thing that solves so many issues in the industry at large.
This was the most valuable pivot in my life on so many levels and it turned into something far greater than expected. What it became is a veritable redesign of the skiing experience (yeah - bold statement but it really happened). The process was open, grew organically, and yielded a constant experience of joy.
BEST…
SEASON…
…EVER.
After 3 days of working in learning sessions I was able to get the beginner to (by will of their own) spin down slopes in “ski ballet” moves as if it were the most natural progression in learning to ski. Whoa!
This was the ultimate reward for managing all the difficulties inherent in undertaking this task over the years. Before I could get there though, I had to get my head straight and clear my intentions.
On the mountain everything makes sense to me because I can be me only in that place. It is an unpopulated pocket reality within an exclusionary alt reality.
Yes, I am that person dancing on skis under the chairlift.
Yes, I flipping own it.
That’s part of the fun in it. There is no way any bad vibes can touch me there despite the prevalence of hostiles who are gatekeepers of the snowsports industry.
Palisades Tahoe - Memorial Day Weekend ‘22 - Day 4 - Filming Final Demos of “Lost Art Edits”
Bully sprays me with snow after one hour of free form movement in that space. I questioned the
intentions of the person who did this when he arrived later. I was not convinced of his excuse.
It wasn’t always like this though. It was a process that was cultivated over time through the embodiment of the martial arts in the way I ski and in learning my personal boundaries by becoming a made New Yorker. Not everyone can do this and but it is my safe place just like the stage is for other artists.
My job is getting it into a form that is shareable in a future that holds true to what it really is. Only recently have I finally understood what that is and its implications. I am working on a soft launch of what that will all be. This process involves reaching out to other artists and fun types to open a conversation about how expressing the human body through movement is important. Especially now.