Title: “PASSION FACE!”

General Information about Item:

• Verbal: Cheer, Joke
• English
• United States

Informant Data:

• Caroline Victoria Koller was born in 1996 in Geneva, Switzerland. She started to figure skate at the age of 7, when she and her best friend after receiving inspiration and encourage from her best friend’s mom, who is a former ice skating champion. Caroline’s family is very supportive of this sport, although no one else in the family skates. She is currently pursuing a Biology major at Dartmouth College, where she is also participating in the Dartmouth Figure Skating Club.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context/Cultural Context: The Dartmouth Figure Skating Club often watches professional skating as a group. More than often while skating, professional skater will have a very strong expression on their face, with their mouth wide open and eyes very focused. Dartmouth figure skaters find these expressions very humorous and have started to call them as “passion faces,” for they are looks of passion. Now when Dartmouth skaters get on ice for a competition, team members would shout “PASSION FACE,” both as a cheer and a joke.
• This piece of folklore was collected during an interview about DFSC with Caroline at Dartmouth College’s Novack Cafe.

Item:

(A Typical Passion Face)

Interview Audio Clip

Transcription of Interview:

Interviewer: “Speaking of inside jokes, is there any sayings or jokes that come to mind?”

Caroline: “Yeah, we have ‘passion face,’ that’s something that we say. Um. It’s when you see a skater and they have like a very strong expression on their face when they’re competing when you watch professional skating. Um, it sometimes can look really funny because their mouth is just wide open and their eyes are really wide, so we joke about it and call it “passion face.”

Informant’s Comments: “Yea, they’re just trying to breathe.” Here, she is referring to why skaters expression such strong expressions, i.e. mouth wide open.

Collector’s Comments: The phrase “passion face” is an inside joke specific to the Dartmouth Figure Skating Club. Simultaneously, the joke is a cheer that member skater shout or chant for their teammates who are on ice. The joke is intended to bring relief to whatever anxiety or tense muscles the competing skaters may have and to encourage relax and enjoy their performance. 

Collectors: Yun Yue Chen, John Gilmore

Tags/Keywords:

Passionface, Skating, Emotion