The social responsibility of the Olympic Games: Olympic women.

This paper will review the history of women’s involvement in the Olympic Games, how gender is socially (re)constructed through these events, current issues facing women who compete at the Olympic/Paralympic level, and what social responsibility the Olympic movement might assume to improve the experiences of Olympic women in the futurePeer reviewe

Dance and Sport

The purpose of this research is to investigate dance and sport as two individual yet intertwining fields. Areas of inquiry include the artistic/aesthetic sports of the Olympic Games particularly rhythmic gymnastics, synchronized swimming, and ice dancing; the artistry and athleticism of cheerleading, dance team, and dancesport; the athleticism in dance companies such as STREB, Pilobolus, Bandaloop, and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre; and the athleticism in the dance training system of Lester Horton. Similarities in corporeal and intellectual practices of athletes and dancers are also explored as they manifest in cross-training, somatics, dance and sports medicine, higher education, and collaboration. The culmination of my research is the creation of Sound Mind Sound Body, a choreographic work bringing a team of dancers together to collaborate and train as athletes as well as performing artists

Spartan Daily, August 31, 2004

Volume 123, Issue 3https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/10007/thumbnail.jp

From the Street to the Stadium and Back Again?:An Analysis of the Neoliberalisation of Skateboarding Following its Inclusion into the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games

Using an interrelated mixed-methods approach, this thesis explores how skateboarding’s introduction into the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games is ‘neoliberalising’ the practice. It does so through three analytical chapters that explore the governance of skateboarding, the Tokyo 2020 skateboarding event broadcasts, and grassroots skateboarding. Informed by Foucault, I characterise contemporary sport as an example of neoliberal governmentality, working to integrate market logics into everyday values and norms through the production of discourse. I thus draw attention to how themes of competitive individualism, performance maximisation, and rationalisation are becoming more salient throughout the spaces of skateboarding as a result of its Olympic debut.However, as neoliberalism continues to stamp its mark throughout the social realm, practices are emerging that challenge this, showcasing their resilient qualities and a desire to maintain their status quo. Skateboarding is one such example. Indeed, skateboarders are responding to the ongoing neoliberalisation of their practice through a strong commitment to its core values of community, creativity, comradery, and most importantly, a focus on fun and enjoyment. A second aim of this thesis is thus to bring to attention how skateboarders, despite the introduction of their practice into the Olympic Games, are showing resilience to this new development. Within these spaces, we find alternative modes of social organisation that offer more egalitarian futures.This thesis therefore contributes to geographical debates on neoliberalisation, showing how sport works both as a site of everyday domination, but also as one for the enactment of ground-up initiatives that challenge the dominant order of discourse, allowing us to imagine futures that are not organised by injustice

Arthleticism: Figure Skating and Modern Dance in Parallel

The focus of this paper will address the implication of modern dance theory of the body into the form of figure skating. Figure skating is both art and sport. Arthleticism is a term I coined specifically in figure skating, which means a skater can perform both artistically and athletically. However, the aesthetic verticality in figure skating was influenced by many different factors, but mainly from classical ballet. The goal of this paper is to challenge the form of figure skating with three-dimensional body movement on ice, and the key to achieve that is the awareness and utilization of the spine through modern dance practice

Music and Politics in Figure Skating: American and Soviet Nationalism, Cultural Diplomacy, and Identity at the Winter Olympics, 1968–1988

This thesis situates figure skating, music, and Cold War politics during three separate Winter Olympic Games held in 1968, 1976, and 1988, examining the impact of this intersection on the sport of figure skating. Through a survey of seven Olympic medal-winning figure skating programs in the men’s and women’s single divisions and the pairs’ division, evidence of the relationship between politics and music is examined in the musical selections of the skaters’ programs. This thesis also explores the overwhelming prominence in skating programs of musical selections that appealed to the tastes of an elite majority during the Cold War, while observing which musical repertories and traditions were regularly excluded. The widespread status of art music as the unofficial soundtrack of Olympic figure skating is likely to have been a consequence of nations competing to appear as culturally erudite as possible. While this role of art music is discernable for the case studies in this thesis, it can also be shown that individual skaters or pairs used their music selections from this musical canon to relate their personal ideas. Building on existing historical scholarship on the Cold War history and on Olympic figure skating, this thesis analyzes past and contemporary trends to pose questions about music’s function as an ideological weapon of warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and other prominent countries in the past. Focusing on issues of cultural elitism, race, gender, sexuality, and class, this thesis also seeks to identify past and present tactics of inclusion and exclusion in the musical repertories associated with figure skating

The Cowl - v.77 - n.1 - Sep 6, 2012

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Vol 77 - No. 1 - September 6, 2012. 28 pages