Winterdanse | Russell, Michael

Recipient of the 2023 International Skiing History Association's Ullr Book Award. The story of ballet skiing is one of unrealized adulthood: a child of clashing influences became a mentor-deprived adolescent, ultimately orphaned and abandoned while searching for self. This wandering youngster answered to a mélange of shifting monikers - Trick, Exotic, Hotdog, Freestyle, Stunt, Ballet, Acro - with Skiing for a surname and blessings by officialdom as inspiration. Winterdanse contemplates the foreshortened life of snow skiing's most creative discipline from the perspective of an athlete who presented it as art, and who understood what was required to sustain it. Or foster its return. Richly illustrated with hundreds of photographs, letters, journal entries, competition documents, performance programs, and news-article excerpts spanning 50 years, Winterdanse is not just about skiing, but about innovation, discovery, and the influence of contemporary culture on sport and art. It is about finding oneself on a road, a good road but not the right road, only to discern that the right road does not yet exist. It is about building a new road with little more than the conviction that it can be built. It is about thinking independently and owning the consequences.