Lunchbox play resurrects forgotten ’88 Olympic sport

From the Jamaican bobsled team to Eddie the Eagle, the Calgary 1988 Olympics were one of a kind.

But, there is one legendary sport that got air time in ’88 you may not have heard of — ski ballet.

“Go for Gold Audrey Pham” is now playing at Lunchbox Theatre through to Feb. 16. It tells the story of a Canadian athlete who participates in ski ballet.

Audrey is from an extremely accomplished family of athletes who all have earned their own Olympic medal, and much to their dismay, she has decided to pursue ski ballet instead of downhill skiing.

She generously opts to billet with a host instead of staying at Canada Olympic Park and is matched up with an extremely eccentric thrift shop owner in Kensington.

Playwright Camille Pavlenko said she started writing the script when she moved to Calgary full time in 2018 and when she was workshopping it, she found nearly everyone in the room had an ’88 story.

“So I started to collect all these really cool pieces of history,” she said.

Pavlenko said the story in “Go for Gold” does some artistic massaging of ski ballet, portraying it as a medal event rather than the reality of it only being an exhibition.

“The truth is that ski ballet was not a regular sport, it was a demonstration sport… it had a lot of foundations about a decade or two before the 1988 winter Olympics and people were very excited for the possibilities for it,” she added.

Pavlenko said one great source for research was speaking with someone who actually did it. 

“Ski ballet is a combination of all the other skiing categories in a sense but with this undeniable dance aspect,” she explained. “It’s incredible… people have their hair done, they’ve got really creative outfits, music is involved.”

Go for Gold Audrey Pham is about an hour long. It plays at Lunchbox Theatre with both afternoon and evening performances available until February 16th.

Tickets at can be found at lunchboxtheatre.com