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Dancing on the Edge - A Ski Ballet Story

A Ski Ballet Story

Switzerland, USA and France - 2024

Intro

 

Ski Ballet was one of the earliest forms of freeskiing: acrobatic, expressive, and technically absurd. It reached global recognition as a demonstration event at the 1992 Winter Olympics… and then vanished. No funding. No federation support. No spectators left.

The athletes who defined it never had their final chapter.

This film documents the rise and decline of Ski Ballet and the improbable reunion of its final generation in Verbier, Switzerland, for what could have been the sport’s last dance… or the beginning of something new.

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WATCH THE FULL FILM - 22min documentary

HOW WE GOT INTO SKI BALLET

How we got into Ski Ballet

 

 

It started with a YouTube rabbit hole.

 

In 2022, Fabrice Becker, former Olympic Champion, repeated his 1992 winning run, 30 years later. The footage was surreal: elegant, athletic, and unlike anything we’d ever seen. That single video triggered everything. Watch it here.

BALLET’S BACK - THE 2023 MGG CAMPAIGN

 

 

MGG saw our early Ski Ballet concepts and immediately understood the potential.

Within months, we built and shot their full 2023 winter campaign:

BALLET’S BACK.

The reaction was explosive.

The campaign went viral across ski culture because nobody had ever seen this performed live. It wasn’t nostalgia, it was disbelief. People demanded context, history, origin.

 

That’s when we realized we had to build the full documentary.

THE REUNION - VERBIER 2024

 

 

In March 2024, two months before Verbier’s season closing, we committed to the insane idea of hosting the largest Ski Ballet gathering in 20 years.

 

We reached out to every athlete, coach, and pioneer we could track down.

 

Most hadn’t seen each other in three decades.

Most had never expected the sport to resurface.

Most said yes.

 

We held a full-scale Ski Ballet event in Verbier, documented the entire thing, and filmed interviews over three days with the sport’s original icons.

 

The result is the 22-minute film above, a historical reconstruction of a discipline that almost disappeared.

PRODUCTION APPROACH

 

 

This wasn’t a simple shoot.

The crew consisted almost entirely of people who had spent their entire lives in the Alps — guides, freeriders, filmers. We thought we had seen everything.

 

We were wrong.

Ski Ballet blindsided everyone on the mountain.

 

Our goal was simple:

 

  • document the discipline with respect

  • give the pioneers a platform

  • build a visual archive that didn’t previously exist

  • capture the last (or first) major gathering of ski ballet in the modern era

Crew

 

Executive Producers Thomas Bata & Charlie Cazalet

Producer and Director Scott Goedkoop

Cinematography Scott Goedkoop​ |Jacob Nilzen | Michael Lasanta | Loic Isliker​

High Speed Cinematography Julien Regnier​

Key Grip & Gaffer Sebastien Biollaz​

Archive Film Gabi Becker​

Editor Paul Cockcroft
Assistant editors Scott Goedkoop & Jacob Nilzen

Color Grading Stéphane Ma

Soundtrack, Sound Mix & Sound Design Antoine Seychal

Event Manager and Photographer Thibaut Lampe

Stylist Paola Colleoni

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Impact

 

Dancing on the Edge moved beyond a documentary release and into the cultural conversation.

 

The film and its imagery were featured in multiple editorial articles, helping reintroduce Ski Ballet to audiences who had never seen or had long forgotten the discipline. What began as a niche rediscovery quickly became a reference point for the sport’s history, aesthetics, and legacy.

 

The project culminated in a series of public film premières across three key cities:

 

  • Montreal, connecting directly with Ski Ballet’s North American roots

  • London, positioning the film within a broader cultural and creative audience

  • Verbier, where the story came full circle with the discipline’s most significant modern-era reunion

 

Each screening was accompanied by live discussions with athletes and contributors, reinforcing the film’s role not just as documentation, but as preservation.

 

The result was clear: a forgotten discipline reclaimed visibility, its pioneers given a final platform, and Ski Ballet re-established as a legitimate chapter of freeskiing history not nostalgia, but context.

 

When execution is precise, culture doesn’t need to be invented. It resurfaces.

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A lost discipline, a forgotten generation, and one final chance to document it before it disappears again.

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© 2026 by SMH

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