OUR PRIMARY FOCUS
Pairs snowdancing
Two skiers moving together. Shared timing, flowing turns, and choreography turn a run into a performance.
02 / THEN, NOW & WHAT’S NEXT
A creative legacy. A fresh chapter.The mountain has
always been a stage.
Ski ballet brought choreography and personality to freestyle skiing—and appeared as a demonstration sport at the 1988 Calgary and 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics.
ISDF celebrates that legacy while looking forward: pairs snowdancing, synchronized performance, and new ways to learn, participate, and connect.
Watch the Olympic Channel throwback ↗Freedom meets freestyle
Spins, steps, music, and acrobatics turn skiing into a form of personal expression. Suzy Chaffee—known to many as “Suzy Chapstick”—helps bring that artistry to a wider audience.
Calgary
Ski ballet takes the Olympic demonstration stage.
Albertville
A second Olympic demonstration appearance.
A shared next chapter
ISDF puts pairs snowdancing at the heart of education, exhibitions, and community.
Explore ski ballet’s Olympic demonstration legacy. Explore the history ↗
The pioneers made their own tracks.
Suzy Chaffee brought a dancer’s approach to the mountain. Alan Schoenberger blended skiing with mime and theatrical storytelling. Bob Howard and Lane Spina expanded the vocabulary of spins and acrobatics. Together with many others, they showed how much expression could fit into one run.
ISDF carries that spirit into pairs snowdancing: shared rhythm, flowing turns, and room to create. Ski ballet, pairs, and synchronized skiing each contribute something to the same creative family.
Meet Suzy Chaffee ↗
DAN / KEEPING THE SPIRIT ALIVE
Meet Dan “The Budman.”
For more than 40 years, Dan Shannon has made playful, expressive skiing part of his life. His distinctive jackets and larger-than-life on-snow personality are part of the story. Today he brings that same energy to ISDF’s Olympic dream.
By his own count, Dan has spent more than 3,000 days on skis, explored over 100 resorts across 14 countries, and skied without poles since 1980. That is a lot of turns—and a lifetime of stories. Dan’s story and ski totals ↗
Dan appeared as an extra in the “Chinese Downhill” sequence of the 1984 ski classic Hot Dog… The Movie. It is another connection between his own story and the exuberant hot-dogging era that helped shape freestyle skiing. Explore Hot Dog… The Movie on Apple TV ↗
Explore Dan’s archive for the personalities, playful performances, and early snowdancing footage behind today’s movement.
Dan’s video archive ↗ · Budman classics ↗
ADRIAN / AN ORIGINAL SNOWDANCER
Meet Adrian Floreani.
Still finding a new way to turn.
Adrian is one of the original snowdancers: a skier, instructor, and inventor whose love of movement connects the sport’s early days to its next chapter. He and Dan met at Mammoth in 1986. That shared history continues today through snowdancing and FloSkis, the company Adrian founded.
His company biography traces his path from skiing the Colorado Rockies to aerospace engineering at NASA. FloSkis describes how his work with vibration damping inspired an on-snow question: could a ski absorb chatter while keeping the freedom to bend and turn? Years of prototypes led to his combination of bamboo-core skis, a flexing riser, and the FloShocks stabilizer.
Adrian’s focus is getting people onto the skis so they can feel the difference for themselves. He wants beginners to enjoy learning and return to the mountain, and intermediates to rediscover progress. His October 2026 plans include short 125 cm teaching skis and a new 160 cm design, with demos and instructor feedback central to the next step.
