Winter Magic
My head itched, but I couldn’t bend my elbows to scratch under my hat. It was a cold January evening in 1992. My arms hung stiffly at my sides. A skinny ribbon of Velcro secured a silver cardboard diamond tightly to my arm, the sharp points extending all the way from my wrist to my shoulder. A matching silver hat, like a graduation cap for a dystopian science academy, was bobby-pinned to my ponytail. I made my way clumsily down the steps of the school bus, ran across the street and through the giant doors to the field, following my sister and a line of sixty or so other high school girls dressed in the same snowflake costume.
We were on our way to perform in “Winter Magic,” the 1992 Super Bowl halftime “spectacular,” a dancing, singing and sports-centered celebration of all things winter in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The show was packed full of performers, including a few celebrities: Gloria Estefan, Peggy Fleming, and the Miracle on Ice hockey team who defeated the Soviets in the 1980 Winter Olympics. It was a ceremony both patriotic and seasonal, dominated by local residents—nearly 1300—filling up every inch of the football field. This was a big budget production that included gymnasts, roller-bladers, acrobats, stilt-walkers, and dancers in the following categories: pointe, ballroom, showgirls, hip hop, sport, snowflake, crystal, tree folk, snowmen, silks, and inexplicably, champagne heat. For good measure, the University of Minnesota Marching Band was there, too. We all huddled together, shivering in the cavernous loading dock of the Metrodome, awaiting our cue. Logistically, making a single entrance with that number of performers, and the set-up crew, would be impossible, but that’s how I remember it. Far back in the sea of people, I craned my neck to see into the stadium, but there were girls with diamonds on their heads and arms as far as I could see. I was one dancer in a cast of thousands.
There was an incredible electricity in the air, generated, I’m sure, by the physical exertion of so many professional athletes mixed with the nervous anticipation of so many amateur performers. It smelled like teen spirit, like polyester, chiffon and Lycra, strategically stretched and draped over hundreds of bodies, in every color of the rainbow. A woman in a fitted turquoise ball gown leaned against a man in a white tuxedo. A crew of gymnasts dressed like Russian nutcracker dancers, complete with furry hats and bright red jackets, jiggled and jogged, trying to stay limber. A giant dressed in a purple turtleneck waited off to the side, pacing, a pair of stilts hidden beneath hot pink lame pants. Two dozen “sport dancers” stamped their feet impatiently, bundled up in taxi-cab yellow puffy pants and sweatshirts with earmuffs, scarves, and ski poles. I envied their layers as I shivered in a white leotard, covered in more cardboard than fabric.
I had been looking forward to this day for five months, two weeks and three days. I can measure that time with precision because, thirty years later, I still have the letter confirming my participation in the show. Timberline Productions managed the 1992 Super Bowl halftime show, and they turned to local high schools and dance studios to find the hundreds of performers they needed. In the fall of 1991, I was a new member of the Academy of Holy Angels dance team, the Starliners. I was a skinny ninth grader, on the team with twenty-three other girls, including my older sister, Julie. Our team performed at halftime of football and basketball games, and in competitions against other dance teams. In 1990, before I joined the team, they had won second place at the state competition, and as top finishers, the team was invited to participate in the Super Bowl halftime. All current members were eligible.
In September, our dance coach distributed the practice schedule for the halftime show, and stressed that anyone who signed up would not be excused from any regular team practices. She also warned us that Timberline Productions would not tolerate any missed practices, so everyone who signed up had to be available on every practice day, no exceptions. There were a lot of girls on the team who had to decline because of the Christmas break trips their families always take. Not a problem for the Ramirezes. I had never been so glad to be a family who didn’t take vacations. My sister and I, and seven other girls filled out the paperwork and committed ourselves.
I was overjoyed. Actually, I was relieved. Here was a performance for me. You see, I was a member of the dance team in the same way that some kids are members of the basketball team, but never see any playing time. I had auditioned and made the team, but that only granted me the right to practice. This was not the era of “everyone gets a ribbon for participating” sports; this was the era of high stakes auditions for every competition. There were clear winners and sore losers. (The winners were sore too, just in a different way, from the 20+ hours of weekly practice.) High school high-kick dance team demanded more than just high kicks. It demanded endurance, flexibility, and a high tolerance for pain. Jump splits were a requirement whose deceptively simple name failed to convey the pain involved in jumping in the air and landing on the ground in the splits. Done in perfect unison with the girls on either side of you, with your arms intertwined. Then, stand up and start kicking.
That day, when our coach invited us to participate in the Super Bowl halftime show, I was already a loser. I had been cut from the competition performance line, relegated to practicing in the back corner of the gym, with four other freshmen dancers. We were marginal members of the team, left out of the routine, the costume fittings, and the dress rehearsals. We were barely there.
The high school experience, outside of dance team, was a similar struggle, requiring me to exercise, in a different way, endurance, flexibility and a high tolerance for pain. My first year wasn’t quite as I imagined, but it was exactly as I had feared. Maybe it was because I was skinny; maybe it was because I was short, and maybe it was because the natural order of things is for kids to tease other kids. Some girls nicknamed me “Blowing in the Wind.” One boy wrote a song for me, but not out of love.
“One Dimensional Girl
She’s so one dimensional
You think there are going to be three, but then you realize there is only one
Oooh
One Dimensional Girl”
Looking back, I can concede that he was right; I certainly felt one dimensional in ninth grade. The teasing I endured based on my size made me feel powerless. And the world didn’t see me as I saw myself. I wanted to be seen as a dancer, but more than that, as a girl who belonged. I couldn’t find that feeling at school, so I leapt at the opportunity to find it outside. I became the most committed dancer in the entire company of the Super Bowl halftime show. This was my invitation to belong.
I believed every sentence in the form letter that offered me acceptance into the performance company, “Because of your talent in your field, you have been selected to participate…” This fed my soul. In the big gym at the local college, with dancers from twelve other high schools, I was number 128. I was enough.
Those feelings of belonging have stayed with me. I revisit them at the conclusion of every NFL football season, privately reliving the excitement and pleasure of my performance. Like so many of our memories of our yesteryears, the show itself is best viewed with a nostalgic and forgiving eye. “Winter Magic” was my personal triumph, and a collective mess.
In twelve minutes, the show included eight different songs. It was a cacophony of participants, each dressed in a different colored turtleneck, as earnest as can be, executing dance routines designed to highlight the magic of winter. Minnesota Public Radio recently ran a piece about it with the headline, Didn’t Age Well and included a picture of me and my sister. We look happy, and sparkly. I have permed bangs and braces glinting the same silver as our jackets.
“Didn’t age well,” might be true for the costumes, the dance moves, and the original Frosty the Snowman rap. But I was so proud of myself for being there. So dedicated to the cause. I sang as loud as I could; I kicked higher than ever, and I ran as fast as possible to get out of the way of the 1980 US Hockey Team on snowmobiles that were streaking towards me as the sounds of One Moment in Time by Whitney Houston faded into We are the Champions by Queen. (This was actually scary, because it was a crowded field, and those snowmobiles were moving fast.) And in twelve minutes, it was all over.
Minnesota’s first Super Bowl halftime show signaled the end of an era, the last time that amateur performers were significant cast members in the production. It was also the first year that more Super Bowl viewers changed the channel to watch competing programming, In Living Color, during halftime. The very next year, the era of professional music acts began with an electrifying special-effects-studded Michael Jackson concert. Ever since, the likes of Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Prince and most recently Dr Dre, have performed mini stadium shows, to nearly universal acclaim.
The consolidation of power within the NFL has moved the control of the halftime show away from the local host city and into the commissioner’s office. Ratings are back up, and the marketing departments are satisfied. But what have we lost? Besides the dancing snowflakes? Local-level decision making, city pride, youthful innocence, and the chance to define ourselves on stage.
MAUREEN RAMIREZ is a writer living in West St Paul, MN. She was awarded an Emerging Writers Fellowship by the Loft Literary Center in 2021. Maureen writes about family, belonging, and nature. When she is not writing, Maureen enjoys birdwatching, trivia games, and seeing live music.