THE MICHELLE KWAN WITHDRAWAL
The Road to the Olympics is Paved with Agony and Ecstasy
It is the dream of millions of little girls to become Olympic figure skating champions, and they especially idealize Michelle Kwan, five-time world and nine-time U.S. Champion, and the U.S. national sweetheart who has been the favorite for an Olympic Gold for a decade.
Heartbreakingly, she settled for silver at Nagano in 1998 and the bronze in 2002 at Salt Lake City.
Repeatedly plagued by injury, Michelle has now made it official: She pulled out from the Turin Games, her last possibility of winning an Olympic Gold.
Discussing this heartbreaking development is Dr. Kay Picart, professor/author/athlete. During your interview with Dr. Picart, she paints a picture of agony and ecstasy experienced by Michelle’s, as well as many others on the road to the Olympics, a road that is paved with high hopes but fraught with the dangers of physical injury as well as the emotional and intellectual challenges of a rigorous training and competition schedule.
Kay reveals that behind the glamour of the Olympics is the fascinating story of real people, who struggle with not only numerous economic obstacles to realize their dreams, but also, particularly if they are immigrants, various cultural and social obstacles.
In addition to discussing the Kwan injury and withdrawal, Dr. Picart tells your audience about the other 13 sports that are waiting in the wings to become official Olympic competitive events.
At the top of the list of the possible new Olympic events for 2008 is: DanceSport, an artistic version of classical Ballroom Dancing, which bears many resemblances to Pairs Ice Dancing.
Dr. Picart does not merely share intellectual information about Olympic training. She has hands on experience as a world class expert dancer who hopes to be in the 2008 Summer Olympic, should DanceSport become an Olympic event.
Kay shares with your audience how DanceSport/Ballroom Dancing was once merely something you watched in an old Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire film or something for weddings or an occasional special night out on the town. But today ballroom dance has a clear shot at become an actual Olympic event, just like figure skating, downhill skiing or the high jump.
Ballroom Dancing turned DanceSport has led to the influx of numerous Eastern European families, who currently live in New York and California. The “Russian Invasion” of the U.S.
DanceSport scene is a dramatic story: parents sacrifice all so that their children may pursue dreams they will never be able to fulfill, working long hours at blue collar jobs; male and female children who have grown up spending years perfecting dance technique rather than having a happy-go-lucky childhood, and who grow up quickly with a sense of respect for their parents and a sense of responsibility because of indebtedness to their parents. The issue of nationality is paramount, as these immigrants strive to integrate into the mainstream as much as they cling on to their identities as Russian or Polish, for example. Since 9-11, because issues of what it means to be “American” have become paramount, the question is both complex and pressing to this crop of potential future Olympic champions as well as to the American public at large.
The issue, of course, is compounded by questions of whether or not DanceSport is a “real” sport, despite its similarities to pairs Ice Dancing, which has been much maligned because of scandals associated with “subjective” and “political” factors.
What differentiates an art from a sport?
What does it take to create a DanceSport champion? Does never winning a Gold, as in Kwan’s case, mean that she is not a “champion”? Is there a difference between a “winner” and a “champion”?
What does it take to recreate a social and recreational pastime (ballroom dancing) into a full Olympic Sport, while maintaining its artistic elements?
Should ballroom dance become an Olympic sport, given its increasing popularity in such popular venues as Dancing with the Stars?
English Professor and cultural critic, Dr. Caroline (Kay) has conducted extensive research on it (she has published a book, From Ballroom to DanceSport: Aesthetics, Athletics and Body Culture (State University of New York Press, 2005) and a second book, Inside Edge: Creating DanceSport Champions, which is under review with the University of Florida Press.
The second book in particular draws from extensive field research, conducted over a year and a half, rooted in interviews with DanceSport judges, coaches, champions, competitors, and dance magazine editors and writers).
In her spare time, Kay captured second place nationally in the pro am cabaret division of the Millenium DanceSport Competition in June 2005 and with another partner, captured second place in the U.S. Worlds, pro am cabaret division in September 2005.
Kay was trained as a ballerina for 16 years, has had training in Philippine, Hawaiian and Korean folk dance; in 1991, she began training in ballroom dancing.
To watch Kay dance, go to:
http://english3.fsu.edu/~kpicart/video.html
About Kay…
Caroline “Kay” Joan S. Picart captured second place at the 2005 United States DanceSport Championships in the World Pro Am Cabaret Champion category, as well as second place at the Millennium National Pro Am Cabaret Championship. When not dancing, Kay (as she prefers to be called) is Associate Professor of English and Courtesy Associate Professor of Law at Florida State University, and is the author of many books, including Remaking the Frankenstein Myth on Film: Between Laughter and Horror, also published by SUNY Press, and Inside Notes from the Outside.
About the book…
From Ballroom to DanceSport
Aesthetics, Athletics, and Body Culture
Caroline “Kay” Joan S. Picart
An insider explores the transformation of ballroom dance into an Olympic sport.
Drawing on recent media portrayals and her own experience, author and dancer Caroline Joan S. Picart explores ballroom dancing and its more “sporty” equivalent, DanceSport, suggesting that they are reflective of larger social, political, and cultural tensions.
The past several years have seen a resurgence in the popularity of ballroom dance as well as an increasing international anxiety over how and whether to transform ballroom into an Olympic sport. Writing as a participant-critic, Picart suggests that both are crucial sites where bodies are packaged as racialized, sexualized, nationalized, and classed objects.
In addition, Picart argues, as the choreography, costuming, and genre of ballroom and DanceSport continue to evolve, these theatrical productions are aestheticized and constructed to encourage commercial appeal, using the narrative frame of the competitive melodrama to heighten audience interest.
“I began this book with but a cursory understanding of ballroom dance and a strong understanding of things rhetorical; I ended it with a deep appreciation of the art of ballroom dancing and admiration for the author’s deployment of contemporary critical theory.” --David Frank, University of Oregon
“This book on the politics, aesthetics, and cultural underpinnings of ballroom dancing and DanceSport is written by someone who participates in both, and this lends an immediacy and authority to the author. Picart is able to provide a very thoughtful and subtle analysis of how society positions itself on the transformation of an art form into a sport.” --Adrian Del Caro, University of Colorado
“Exceptional, remarkable, unique, very well researched, and comprehensible! Picart’s book, From Ballroom to DanceSport, examines the increasing popularity of ballroom and cabaret dancing and the myriad of issues and forces involved internationally in the quest (and debate) for inclusion in the Olympics as dancesport. This book is a ‘must’ read for all students of dance, amateur and professional dancers, those involved in dance media, dance organizations, and all who enjoy social dancing.” --Jessie Lovano-Kerr, Florida State University
To visit Kay’s web site that features her art business, Kinaesthetics, go to:
http://www.kinaestheticssportasart.com/
EXTENDED BIOGRAPHY OF KAY PICART:
Dr. Caroline Joan (Kay) Picart is currently an Associate Professor of English and Courtesy Associate Professor of Law at Florida State University. She is a philosopher and former molecular embryologist educated in the Philippines (B.S. biology, magna cum laude and M.A., with honors, in philosophy at the Ateneo de Manila University), England (M.Phil., Sir Run Run Shaw Scholar and Wolfson Prize Winner, history and philosophy of science, Cambridge University), and the United Stats (Ph.D., with honors, philosophy, with doctoral minors in comparative literature, and aesthetics and criticism, The Pennsylvania State University).
She is the author of Resentment and “the Feminine” in Nietzsche’s Politico-Aesthetics (Penn State University Press, 1999); The Cinematic Rebirths of Frankenstein: Universal, Hammer and Beyond (Praeger, 2001); coauthored with Frank Smoot and Jayne Blodgett, The Frankenstein Film Sourcebook (Greenwood, 2001); Remaking the Frankenstein Myth on Film: Between Horror and Laughter (State University of New York Press, 2003); the Holocaust Film Sourcebook 2 Volumes (Praeger, 2004), and Inside Notes from the Outside (Lexington Books/Rowman and Littlefield, 2004).
Recent projects include: From Ballroom to DanceSport: Aesthetics, Athletics and Body Culture (State University of New York Press, advance release, December 2005); Inside Edge: Creating Ballroom Champions (Under Review, University Press of Florida); Images and Words, Words as Images: Updating Visual Culture Studies (Under Review, Oxford University Press); and with Cecil Greek, a co-edited anthology on images of the gothic in relation to representations of crime and violence in film and media (Under Review with Illinois University Press).
Dr. Picart has published articles in film criticism, criminology, autoethnography, law, criminology, social and political philosophy, aesthetics, feminism and philosophy, philosophy/sociology of science, and phenomenology, as well as more than eighty popular pieces on Philippine art and culture as a columnist in various Korean and U.S. newspapers and magazines.
Most recently, her work in autoethnography, visual art, and dance have resulted in several videos that have been funded by grants from the Institute of Race and Ethnicity, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, St. Lawrence University, Swarthmore College, and with the technical assistance of the Office of Distributed and Distance Learning, Florida State University.
Kay was trained in ballet, Hawaiian dance, and Philippine folk dance for fifteen years, and has been a student of ballroom since 1990. She developed a radio program, Ballroom Dancing with a Twist, which is currently being streamed over the internet, in collaboration with RadioTVFilipino Network, based in Boca Raton via: http://www.radiotvphilippines.net/radio.htm. Her most recent dance-related accomplishments are: winning second place in the Millennium DanceSport Nationals in pro am cabaret dancing in June 2005, and capturing second place, with a different partner, in the U.S. Open to the Worlds pro am cabaret competition in September 2005, where 40 countries participated and the very best in the world competed.
Dr. Picart is also a visual artist who has exhibited in the Philippines, South Korea and various parts of the U.S., and has started an art business, Kinaesthetics.