The magic of Milan-Cortina 2026 comes to life
While preparations for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo are in full swing, the sports world is buzzing with activity. For those who know me at Miss Salsa, you know that my heart doesn't just beat faster for a tight salsa combination, but for every form of movement where technique and flow come together. The Winter Games, taking place from February 6 to 22, 2026, promise to be a spectacle where the line between sport and art form becomes increasingly blurred.
In the mountains of Livigno, where the snowboarding events will be held, we are eagerly looking forward to one specific discipline: the women's snowboarding halfpipe. This isn't just a descent; it's choreography on a vertical wall of ice. And there is one name currently making all the headlines.
Chloe Kim's four words
The biggest star of the halfpipe, Chloe Kim, has officially brought the rumor mill to a halt. With a short but powerful message on social media, she announced: "See you in 2026". These four words immediately caused a wave of reactions, including from sports icons such as alpine skier Lindsey Vonn and gymnast Suni Lee, as can be read in this report by The Big Lead.
Kim, who already has two gold medals to her name (PyeongChang 2018 and Beijing 2022), is to the snowboarding world what a prima ballerina is to classical ballet. She pushes boundaries, not only through the difficulty of her tricks but also through the way she performs them. In my 30 years of experience in the dance world, I have seen many athletes, but the control she has over her body in the air shows enormous parallels with the 'airtime' we see in modern dancers.
Rhythm and Flow: Why snowboarding is actually dancing
When we look at the technical aspects of the halfpipe, we see elements that we train daily in the dance studio. Consider the 'transition' – the moment a snowboarder moves from one side of the pipe to the other. This requires a flawless sense of rhythm. If you miss the timing, you lose momentum, just like a dancer who falls out of time during a series of turns.
The rotations Kim makes, such as the 1080 or even the 1260, are in fact extremely accelerated pirouettes. The focus here is on 'spotting' and core stability. At Miss Salsa, we always emphasize the importance of a strong core for a stable dance posture; in the halfpipe, this is the difference between a perfect landing and a fall. The way Kim 'lands' her jumps and flows directly into the next move is what we call 'liant' in the dance world – the art of connecting movements seamlessly.
Lessons from figure skating
The link between ice, snow, and dance was also recently made clear again during the qualifications and test events. According to the live coverage from the BBC, we saw in ice dancing how the French pair Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron took the gold medal with a score of 225.82. The jury praised their 'sultry and moody' performance to a cover of Paint It Black.
What can we learn from this for the halfpipe? Presentation. Although snowboarding is a judged sport that leans heavily on technical difficulty, the 'style factor' plays a huge role. It's about how you 'grab' a trick and how long you hold that position. That is pure aesthetics, comparable to the 'line' of a dancer in an arabesque.
What can we as dancers take away from this?
Watching top athletes like Chloe Kim or ice dancers Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson (who stole the audience's hearts despite a seventh-place finish) gives us valuable insights for our own practice on the dance floor.
- Mental resilience: Kim took a break from the sport to work on her mental health. In the dance world, where pressure is often high, this is a powerful signal. Rest is a part of training.
- Spatial Awareness: Knowing where you are in space, whether you are floating three meters above a halfpipe or making a fast turn in a busy salsa club, is important for safety and precision.
- The power of simplicity: Sometimes a simpler movement performed perfectly is more powerful than a complex move that is shaky. We saw that too in the ice dancing scores; technique is the foundation, but emotion wins hearts.
The road to 2026
The coming months will be dominated by World Cup competitions where athletes must collect points for qualification. For Chloe Kim, this means she needs to find her form again after her absence. For Dutch fans, it is also something to look forward to, seeing our own talents trying to qualify for this global stage.
The event in Milan-Cortina will be spread across various locations. While figure skating and short track take place in Milan, for snowboarding, we really have to go to the mountains. The atmosphere there is unique; it's a combination of a top-tier sporting climate and a festival vibe, something we naturally know very well in the salsa scene too.
In practice, this means that in February 2026, we will once again be glued to the screen en masse. Not just to keep track of the medal table, but to enjoy the pure art of movement. Whether it's on a parquet floor or in an icy halfpipe, the passion for perfection remains the same. At Miss Salsa, we will continue to follow these developments, because every athlete who moves with such suppleness and rhythm is, in my eyes, a dancer.