WinterSports2002.com, Friday, February 08, 2002

Cultural Olympiad has rich heritage

By Kris Taylor
Deseret News correspondent

As everyone knows, such world-famous athletes as Michelle Kwan and Picabo Street will be participating in the Salt Lake Winter Olympics. World-class artists and entertainers such as violinist Itzhak Perlman and glass-sculptor Dale Chihuly will also be participating through the Cultural Olympiad.

What many do not know is that the Cultural Olympiad — also commonly referred to as the Olympic Arts Festival — is as much a part of the Olympics as cross country skiing, speedskating or any other event.

Raymond T. Grant, the director of Salt Lake's Cultural Olympiad, said the cultural aspect of the Games is much more important than many realize.

"I believe it creates the atmosphere in and around the Games," Grant said. "I believe that's what people remember about the Games.

"In my experience with Sydney, in my experience with talking to some of the organizers of Atlanta, frequently you find that folks forget who won what medals, but they never forget the atmosphere of the Games."

Mixing the artistic with the athletic for the Olympics is hardly a new concept. The Olympics have always been accompanied by the arts.

Grant explained that a 700 B.C. text, found on the shoulder of a vase buried in an Athenian grave, contained the inscription, more or less: "He who dances most nimbly of all, take this the vase as your prize."

"It suggested two things. It suggested that prizes were given for cultural competitions, and it also suggested that culture was an integral part of the Games," Grant said.

It was precisely this blend of arts and sport that Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin had in mind for the Olympics when he revived them in 1896, according to an essay from the Atlanta Cultural Olympiad Committee. De Coubertin created a "Pentathlon of the Muses," an Olympic competition in architecture, sculpture, painting, music and literature.

By 1948, de Coubertin and others were finding that the most innovative artists of the day were not very interested in the competitions. The next year, the International Olympic Committee decided to replace the art competition with an "Olympic Celebration of the Arts."

The competition element for the Cultural Olympiad is making a comeback this year, though in a smaller capacity, Grant said. "We're reinstituting the notion of competition like in the rodeo."

Beyond bringing back the competitions, Grant said, there are many aspects of Salt Lake's Cultural Olympiad that harken back to the early Olympics. Poet laureate Robert Pinsky and cowboy-poet Waddie Mitchell will be performing during the Olympics as did Pindar, the ancient Greek poet, Grant said.

Also, just as Pindar was often commissioned to do work for the Games, so too will there be many commissioned works performed during the 2002 Games.

"The cultural legacy we will have in this community from these Games is the creation of new work," Grant said. "Singularly, the essays we commission, the new work by Judith Jamison with the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, the new work Ririe Woodbury is doing, the new work the dance company Pilobolus is doing, the three new plays we commissioned on the concept of the American West, are clearly a cultural legacy because they won't be locked up in the Olympic Museum in Lausanne."

With the emphasis so often on just the Olympic sports, Grant said, it's important to remember what the Cultural Olympiad means to the Olympics overall.

"Anciently, music competitions preceded sport, in some cases many years before sport was added. (The Cultural Olympiad) had a fantastic history.

"With that said, in recent years it still remains that important thread to the Olympic Games."

E-MAIL: pthunell@desnews.com

© 2002 Deseret News Publishing Company