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News & ArtsThursday, February 11, 2010
Sports Today in Offensive Ice Dancing
Posted by David Schmader on Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 1:05 PM
It began innocently enough, with a decision by the International Skating Union that ice dancers should incorporate folk themes into their Olympic routines. Details on subsequent troubles come from the Los Angeles Times:
That led Russians Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, the reigning world champions, to create a program with allegedly Australian Aboriginal music and to perform it wearing brown face, tribal paint and costumes with clumps of faux foliage.Sol Bellear, of the New South Wales state Aboriginal Land Council, told an Australian newspaper: "It's very offensive."
Is Sol Bellear of the New South Wales state Aboriginal Land Council being hypersensitive? I can't say. Here's what the Times' Philip Hersh had to say:
While there is nothing inherently wrong about having dancers interpret ethnic themes, it looks absurdly out of place amid the frivolity that is ice dance. Even with well-intentioned efforts at sensitivity, there is an element of high camp rather than cultural authenticity when ice dancers do the folk programs.
And here's a pic.
- Los Angeles Times
The brown body stocking is a nice touch.
5
Offensive is in the eye of the beholder.
Unless they go dressed up as Canadian First Nation aboriginals, I doubt it will matter.
Unless they go dressed up as Canadian First Nation aboriginals, I doubt it will matter.
7
Oh Ice Dancing, the tackiness, the corruption, and the incestuous routines (I'm looking at you Duchesnays). This event always brings the DRAMA!
8
Turns out they've already decided to drop the costumes. Best headline so far:
"Skaters won't go native."
"Skaters won't go native."
9
You want offensive? Check out all the Native Americans in Pioneer square dressed up mock western costumes.
10
I thought Australia was beyond race? Isn't that what they said when they did that blackface thing about the jackson 5 months ago?
11
Good rule for life: if you're bent out of shape about something an ice dancer is doing your priorities are fucked.
17
How could you combine the phrase "began innocently enough" w/ the decision by the ISU that "dancers should incorporate folk themes into their ... routines." That's like saying "it began innocently enough w/ twelve jello shots, a half kilo of coke and a loaded handgun." Asking over-privileged, isolated, and intellectually stunted performers to ape their lame concepts of "folk themes" is the acme of stupidity.
18
Is it offensive? Well, I dunno... Would it be offensive if, instead of 'brown-face', they went all the way to 'black-face' and did an ice-dancing minstrel routine?
You tell me......
You tell me......
20
Given all the publicity and all the aryan sympathizers in BC , they'll probably get extra points for throwing a couple of insults against aborigines also.
And the you got the other duffosses using Afro-Brazilian music while wearing middle eastern garbs ......what's wrong with these people. Aren't there enough european cultures that they can mock or interpret ? They seem to go out of their way to insult cultures they have no relationships with or little knowledge of whatsoever.
21
The word tacky doesn't even begin to cover it. It's beyond gauche, it's...offensive. Racist? I'd say those outfits debase Aborigines, Russians, the ice they're skating on, the pixels on my screen, the cables that conveyed the data to my screen that was assembled to present the image...
22
Good god, how can anyone even question whether or not that's offensive. Would it be clearer if it were full-blown Mammy minstrel-show blackface? Fu Manchu mustaches and cheongsams with taped-up eyes? Wonder bread and American cheese taped to a lily-white bodysuit?
25
The Russians have tons of their own folklore and national costumes within the borders of what was the old Soviet Union; why pick Austrailian aboriginals?
26
Can we please attack the sport of ice dancing with a machete and kill it until it is dead? Why is this nonsense in the Olympics, for the luvva...
27
@25 - they probably picked it because they did not have to use any creativity - they apparently "borrowed" it from some Australian skaters who did.
http://www.theage.com.au/sport/aborigina…
http://www.theage.com.au/sport/aborigina…
28
As a former figure skater, who has immense respect for the skills of good ice dancers (it is seriously hard to do, even if there are no triple jumps -- it doesn't look hard, but it is), I still think that ice dancing doesn't belong in the Olympics anymore. It's just too goddamned ridiculous with the costumes and the bad acting and melodrama.
Then again, I think that skaters should compete in uniforms, no sequins and fringe, etc. It's a damned sport, not a fashion show. So I am apparently a heretic.
Then again, I think that skaters should compete in uniforms, no sequins and fringe, etc. It's a damned sport, not a fashion show. So I am apparently a heretic.
29
23 is armed with the truth.
And agreed re: 28: Doing anything at an Olympic level is hard as shit.
And agreed re: 28: Doing anything at an Olympic level is hard as shit.
31
It does not appear that they made an effort to consult Aboriginal Australians when they created this routine, that was foolish of them.
Ozchick @ 27,
Thank you for the link. "Borrowing" it is a sad discovery as well.
Ozchick @ 27,
Thank you for the link. "Borrowing" it is a sad discovery as well.
33
They should stick with their own ethnicity, I think. Then it would be Russians celebrating their own culture, or making fun of it as they have a right to do with their own. But if you try to use someone else's culture, you are liable to offend.
34
@32 - technically untrue. Certain areas they did, made from bark. Think of it as an Afro-Australian fusion if you must.
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