General Information:

• Customary Folklore: Tradition

• Language: English

• Country: Hanover, NH, USA

Informant Data:

• Spring Y. Yu is from Wading River, NY. She was born in 1997. She started skating at the age of five. In terms of family, her sister, Iris Yu, class of ’14, also skated as a child and at Dartmouth College as a member of the DFSC. On campus, Spring is a Studio Art Major and is a dancer in Dartmouth’s Street Soul.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context/Cultural Context: Every fall, the Dartmouth Figure Skating Club has a fall photoshoot at the BEMA, an outdoor amphitheater on Dartmouth’s campus. Every member dresses in nice clothing, such as Fall dresses and button down shirts and slacks. Multiple photos are taken by a professional photographer at different photogenic locations in the BEMA. It is unclear how the tradition started, but the interviewee believes it began well before even her older sister was a student at Dartmouth College.
• This piece was collected during an interview about DFSC with Spring on the the First Floor of Baker Berry Library

Item:

Associated audio file:

Transcript of Associated File:

Spring: “So the photoshoot is something that we do every year, in the fall. Um, it’s just that the entire team basically goes to the BEMA,  and we take pretty pictures, and its just like a pretty fun way to get together, and get to know whose on the team. And overall its a pretty fun time!”

Collector’s Comments:

While it might not appear important at first, the fall photoshoot is the DFSC’s first big event of the year where, as Spring mentions in her interview, everyone finally gets to meet everyone else on the team. The tradition invite the team members to bond with each other through photos and gorgeous scenery. They are able to act silly and goof off with fellow members outside of the serious atmosphere of the  ice rink, and bond with each other through this tradition.

Tags/Keywords:

Photoshoot, fall foilage, team, tradition.

Collected by John Gilmore