Winter Park’s Ski Ballet Competition Revives a Forgotten Sport
Ballet is back!
On November 15, Winter Park, Colorado, is hosting a ski ballet competition with a $1,000 winner’s cash prize. Registration costs $15 for singles and $45 for teams.
Come competition day, skiers will face off on the intermediate trail Cranmer above the mid-mountain Snoasis lodge.
They’ll be scored by a panel of judges based on the following criteria: “Style & Flow, Creativity & Originality, Entertainment Value, and Retro/Costume Spirit.”
The “Most Stylish Routine” and “Best Musical Choreography” will be recognized, too.
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The ski ballet competition, which is a perfect early-season diversion, joins another November event at Winter Park: a mogul skiing showdown held on the 22nd.
What Is Ski Ballet?
We’re far enough away from ski ballet’s heyday that the niche sport probably needs a reintroduction. The discipline first emerged in the 1960s and 1970s alongside the then-burgeoning freestyle movement.
As its name implies, ski ballet involves dancing down the slopes, usually with a musical accompaniment. Competitors wore costumes, spun into the air using their ski poles, and otherwise dazzled. In 1988 and 1992, ski ballet featured as a demonstration sport in the Winter Olympics. At a high level, it was actually pretty bad a**.
Here's a visual primer.
“Listen, when we were doing it, and people were watching back then, nobody laughed,” said Canadian ballet skier Steve Hambling, according to olympics.com. “People were like, ‘Holy Christ, these guys are amazing.’”
But ski ballet’s momentum faltered there. In the early 1990s, snowboarding was beginning to really take off. The rise of a new, trick-oriented skiing generation followed soon afterward. And ski ballet, for the most part, ended up being relegated to the history books as newer, shinier toys took over snow sports.
A comeback may be on the way, though—at least in terms of fun one-off events like Winter Park’s. Last winter, Monarch Mountain, Colorado, held its first annual “Ski Ballet on Freeway Competition,” which POWDER covered in our new print issue.
It’s unlikely that ski ballet returns to the Olympics or another official arena, but Monarch Mountain and Winter Park might be on to something. Dressing up and twirling down groomers looks fun and, maybe in the future, could join pond skimming as a regular, lighthearted event on ski resort calendars.