World Figure

World Figure is a film currently in development that takes its name after a figure skating competition currently celebrating its tenth anniversary, World Figure and Fancy Skating. Founded by medaled Olympian Karen Courtland Kelley, World Figure and Fancy Skating hosts an anachronistic style of ice skating. The practice is referred to as skating 'figures', from which the sport originally developed and took its name, where skaters use the imprint left behind by their blades to create intricate drawings on the ice. The competition is a monumental project and a one-woman show at once, a complicated allusion to a rich history, and the only celebration of a difficult and ornate kind of artistry on the brink of extinction. The questions this event poses- how to culturally relate to a materially irrelevant practice- was already settled in the minds of the medieval europeans, and founders of the sport. World Figure follows the 5 day competition, interested in the issues of the revival movement-- the thought that the past is a template that can be returned to and restored at any moment, like a blueprint for action, as mirrored in the actions of the skaters. The video below are the first 12 minutes of the film.