An Uplifting Experience at the Olympics.

The championship ballroom dance team of Sharon and David Savoy has demonstrated lifts and poses around the world, using as backdrops such monuments as the Colosseum, the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal and the Parthenon [Dance Magazine, March 2000, page 64]. Last September found the Arlington, Virginia, couple in Sydney, Australia, where they performed at the 2000 Olympic Games. Here, the Savoys share memories of their Olympic moment.

Sharon and I caught a flight from Washington, D.C., to Sydney, Australia, and within twenty-four hours we were performing at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. We executed our new number, This Is the Moment (music from the Broadway musical Jekyll and Hyde), with precision that surprised even us, because security guards would not let us test the stage before our performance. Anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 people saw our show in the hall, and uncounted others witnessed it on jumbo video screens scattered around the Olympic Village. The venue was the Olympic Rendezvous, a place for athletes and visitors to meet and relax. The stage featured a different ethnic theme each day. On the day we performed, Italian artists in full Renaissance regalia offered opera, folk dances and other historical entertainment. Other artists, such as ourselves, were tucked in between the ethnic themes.

Coming to the Olympics is like floating in a sea of world culture. There are so many people moving from venue to venue. By osmosis, the international goodwill permeates your being. After the Olympic performances, we were escorted to Fox Studios to perform at the Fox theme park, a Disneyland-style attraction in Sydney.

Sharon and I watched the rhythmic gymnastics final, which was truly an inspiration. Later that day, the closing ceremonies were scheduled. The tickets in the "A" section were a whopping $1,300 apiece, with scalpers still trying to unload them. We were negotiating until I realized that I had left our money in the passport bag back at the lodge. However, fortune smiled upon us when we realized that we had sold all of our first shipment of Savoy 2001 Dance Odyssey calendars in Sydney and had some extra cash. By this time the closing ceremonies had already started and the ticket price had plummeted. For $500 we were able to get two tickets under the Olympic cauldron, where the flame was burning brightly.

The closing ceremonies were an exclusively Australian extravaganza. Australian singers and celebrities such as golfer Greg Norman, actress/model Elle Macpherson, actor/director Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee) and stars well-known to the Australian public but less familiar to an international audience were all there. Sharon and I were very pleased to see ballroom's own Australian champions, Jason Gilkison and Peta Roby, the stars of Burn the Floor, listed as headliners in the closing ceremonies program. They are very good friends of ours and we have performed with them many times all over the world. They are known for their charismatic choreography and they did not disappoint this Olympic crowd. They danced to "Love Is in the Air," backed up by about twenty ballroom dancers in the center and 700 couples around the outside track perimeter, all doing a lively samba. It was wonderful to see Jason and Peta genuinely enjoying themselves as they danced in the Olympic spotlight. They truly deserved this honor.

One of the more humorous moments took place when drag queens came out in Mardi Gras costumes driving motorized, highly decorated high-heeled shoe floats. There was entertainment for all tastes and persuasions.

The finale began with a rocket that symbolically extinguished the Olympic flame. We could feel the heat of the engines as the afterburners roared over our heads. Then the mother of all fireworks displays commenced. From our home in Virginia, Sharon and I have a direct view of the Fourth of July pyrotechnics on the Washington, D.C., Mall, but even those paled in comparison to this Aussie phantasmagoria of colored light. The display subsided after about an hour, when the Olympic rings on the Sydney Harbor bridge disintegrated into a waterfall of fireworks that fell into the water below.

The massive crowds leaving the venues jammed the train stations, which were unused to handling such a throng. Some stations actually closed down, creating massive frustration and near-riots. By the time Sharon and I made it to our last train stop, after a very long wait and much jostling, there were no cabs to take us to our lodge. But the key to the success of the Olympic games--the Aussies themselves--came to the rescue. Both times that we were stranded at a train station, an Australian volunteered to give us a lift to our lodge fifteen minutes away. (Try that in New York!)

It was an event of truly Olympic proportions. We were glad we went and we were honored to have performed.