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Bored with ski school?

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
nolo wrote:
Please. Harald Harb did not invent "hand skiing." Every ski coach worth his or her salt uses this important mirroring tool to transfer movements of the shoulders, arms and hands to movements of the hips, legs and feet.

To hear Harald and his fan club, the sport of skiing sprang fully formed from Harald's bran.


Nolo

I agree ten fold. Harb's following and some of their claims is amazing. BTW, Rusty would be proud of your response. Very Happy
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Jonpim wrote:
erica2004, though skiing articles and manufacturers suggest skis were straight (parallel) sided up until the end of the 1990s, this is untrue. Skis have for at least the last 30 years have had a "side cut" (front and back wider than middle), but recently the sidecut has been accentuated. Years before so-called carvers, Ali Ross was telling us that because of the curved shape of the ski, if we just put weight on the edge of the ski, it would turn and us with it ("the ski turns you: you don't turn the ski!").
Skiers have always been trying to carve with their parallel turns: the new skies have just made it easier.


I just had a look at my 40+ year old skis in the loft. Their stats are: 86,70,77.
Nearly 20 years ago I remember being praised for "carving" my turns, but of course it wasn't carving as we know it: leaving tram-tracks in the snow.
Several years later I skied with Martin Epp for a few days. He made me learn his strongly unweighted turn (practically bouncing round the first half of the turn). I imagine many of you who did the SCGB reps' course had this experience. It seriously damaged my skiing for about 2 years till I managed to get the "carve" back.

Seeing erica2004 chastised for mentioning a technique 5 years old made me smile ruefully that I'm pleased with myself for no longer skiing with my legs glued together as I was taught on the skis before those mentioned above.
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Nolo is quite correct: the hand skiing concept did not originate with PMTS. I did not mean to convey that it had.


The hand skiing concept I came to through Denise McLuggage's book The Centered Skier and through climbing sequence practice. I mentioned HH's system only because I really could not understand that system through the online animated sequences without the extra tool of hand skiing and my colleagues only quit when they had laughed themselves quite hoarse.
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 You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
Quote:
I just had a look at my 40+ year old skis in the loft. Their stats are: 86,70,77.


I just purchased a set of cross country touring skis with these dimensions. There is nothing new and all that. . . Very Happy Snowball, I'd love to have a chance to ski with you sometime.
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 Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
comprex : well, I'm flattered. I have yet to ski in the USA, largely because of the extra cost. Since I am an artist ( www.david-johnson.co.uk ) cost is the chief constraint rather than time.
Where are you based?

At present I am organising a group to ski the steep off-piste in the Dolomites (Italy) with a marvelous French guide called Zebulon Roche* (I don't know if you saw my posting on his exploits).The first time he took a group there he couldn't understand why there were no other tracks. He thought it must be dangerous in some way he couldn't detect.
"No" he was told, "The Italians just don't ski much off-piste".

His home is in Val Cenis, which has about a dozen very small to medium resorts skied mostly by the French, and some very good off-piste that no one skis (including some good tree skiing: http://www.skicardiff.com/photos/pictures/Pic_26_6.jpg and http://www.skicardiff.com/photos/pictures/Pic_26_4.jpg ).
Some friends and I skied with him there the last 2 years, having met him in Verbier before that.
One day last year we had skied several valleys and gulleys without seeing another track, when suddenly we crossed some tracks. We joked with him that the mountain was getting crowded but it turned out they were our own tracks from earlier in the day!

* Zebulon (normally Zeb) is a nickname universally used for him and derives from the children's TV character we call Zebedee over here.

(Sorry, folks, just realised this is rather off-subject)
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 You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
snowball, the title of the thread is Bored with Ski School, so anything goes.
I just had a look round your webisite. I must admit to a certain scepticism of "modern art" (I'm not entirely sure what I mean by that term), but this may be changing. I was listening to Tracey Emin on the radio the other day. She has had some really bad press, but she came across as independent down-to-earth lady who had a tough childhood, and who explained herself and her art in language I could understand.
Some of your stuff I don't really understand, but Facing the Dark definitely gets a reaction. Such a simple scene (seemingly), but I could stare at it for hours.
I must try and get rid of my fixed preconceptions of what is art.
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 Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Thanks, Jonpim,
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
snowball, Over the ten years we spent in Provence we went to vernissage after vernissage. The place is swamped with 'artistes'! Through the summer entire villages are taken over by l'artiste dans la rue' exhibitions. Great fun, some absolutely dire stuff alongside real talent. As much as you can tell from website images, I thought your work was fascinating. Would love to see it one day. Thought I'm not so sure about 'Time Piece'!
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 You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
snowball , you've some interesting terrain there. Tell me more as the date approaches?

Browsing your website, I have to echo Jonpim, _some_ of the displays are entirely beyond me. However, I was curious as to

Quote:
There we can experience meaning at its moment of being born in things.


Can you, do you perceive skiing in this way?
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 Ski the Net with snowHeads
Ski the Net with snowHeads
PG, Time Piece was the oldest work in there. I did it when I was still at art school (about 5 years before Damien Hirst went to art school, I think). ( I originally trained as an architect and then changed my mind.)
An Austrian artist used meat in performances but as far as I know I was the first to use it in a static piece (It is also in "The effect of Gravity on the Universe", but hidden).

comprex, Well, to get any further about the nature of art it would be easier to talk face to face. If you thought of my work more as concrete poetry than visual art it might help.
Specifically I feel my work is close to the poetry of the American, Wallace Stevens (I am giving a talk, at a symposium on him next month, called "What Stevens' ideas might look like as visual art")
The arts lie on a continuum from pure music to literature, with visual art in the middle. I am on the literary (metaphorical) edge.

Obviously in skiing I'm not concerned with human intention, so any idea of meaning cannot be of the same kind. (If you believe in god the difference might not be so stark)
Our relationship to a work of art is in parallel to our possible relationships to the world. The emergence of those parallels is what I would call the birth of meaning.

In skiing the relationship is extremely direct, almost the opposite to that of art, even though most artists are trying to bridge that gap and get closer to reality.
They have in common that engagement with reality that pushes aside our usual world of habit and buffered existence: poetry through opening up meaning and questions, skiing through its absolute physical directness of engagement through our bodies with a world that is not human.

In the sense that my engagement with life is the meaning of my life, yes, there is a connection, but not in the way I meant the phrase when I wrote it.

Well, I don't know if this will enlighten or merely fog everything even worse.

As for the Dolomites and Val Cenis etc: sure, but we've got quite alot of interest already and not many places.

[b[jonpim[/b] Re Tracy Emin,: artists usually talk more simply about their work than critics do. (but talking about the nature of art like this I've entered the realm of the critic or the philosopher).


PS Asking what a work of art means is never exactly the right question. The question should be more: how can I look at this so that it becomes meaningful. (A subtle distinction but I hope you get the idea, at least a little).
A common misconception about style in art is that it is something arbitrary that is tacked on. Actually style is a byproduct of the artist trying to deal with something (or several things). The reason that imitators are seldom as good is that they are imitating the look, rather than dealing with the problems that produced it.
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 snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
"Obviously in skiing I'm not concerned with human intention"

Au contraire, Snowball, skiing is all about intent, which is why people go to ski school, to better match their results with what they had intended.
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 And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
nolo, I guess you probably know what I meant but I'll say it anyway: I was trying to answer comprex's question about the emergence of meaning. What I do obviously relates to my intention, but I'm not, as in art, concerned with discovering someone else's intended meaning (or, more properly, the possibilities of meaning contained in an object intended to contain meaning)*. Someone who believed in god, however, might believe they were discovering a god-given meaning.

* I won't even start on the postmodernist idea of the death of the "author" which rather irritates me.
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 So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
snowball, I obviously need to loosen the stays on my brain. I don't understand what you are saying. I expect the problem is mine rather than yours. Is it possible to free up rigid minds like mine without illegal chemicals?
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
erica2004 wrote:
I have become a little bored with ski school because the group travels at the speed of the least capable skier - and you have to keep stopping for rests. (Why can't Brits get off their bums and get fitter?) .


Hi Erica. I thought I'd tell you about my experiences in ski groups last year at Whistler....

Last winter I got moved up from a 3 day ski group into a higher group. The lower group were incredibly slow because a single skier out of the nine of us had only skied in europe so didn't have the proper gear so we had to keep stopping so he could un-steam his goggles *tsk!*. Most of the group were pi**ed off with the speed we were going but I managed to move up to a higher group, persuading the instructor I was fit and fast enough.

However, it turned out the higher group was quite a bit higher than my previous group and I found myself being that dreaded person in the group that holds everyone up. We'd scoot out along a ledge and the instructor would tell us to go down a steep bit of slope (or "cliff" as it looked at the time) one by one. Now I'm one of those people that would rather ski straight over a ledge and stop halfway down the slope because looking over the edge freaks me out. I think it's the logical part of my brain telling me I'm crazy for even contemplating going down there. Going green

It's not that I didn't have the fitness or even the skill. It's the lack of confidence I get on unfamiliar slopes and as everyone probably knows, your knees don't bend when you freeze up! I think of it as a safety feature in my brain because I envy those carefree skiers who don't seem to have a fear in the world.

With regard to ski-groups though, me and my hubbie had a private lesson last year and although he's got an extra years skiing on me, the lesson was excellent and I felt I learnt more in ski technique in that one day's lesson than I did in all of the 8 days of group lessons I'd taken previously that same holiday. snowHead snowHead

The new trick was to pole-plant at the end of the turn rather than the beginning. Yes, I know it's the same but psychologically it somehow worked. That's the skill of a really good instuctor! Smile
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 Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Thanks for all that. I now am more clueless than when I sent the first post!! Does this mean that no-one who teaches skiing in the resorts I've been to is any good? How do we know if we're being taught correctly? Having researched the archives for good ski schools, I have booked myself some private lessons with New Generation in Courchevel in March. Although I'm going to Obergurgl and Lech first - to be taught the old way? Confused.
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