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Sun Valley Film Fest Nabs Jodie Foster Page 3
Annual Skijoring Event This Weekend in Hailey Page 7
This Year’s Nordic Fest Town Sprints Draw Paralympians and Other Disabled Athletes read about it on PaGe 17
F e b r u a r y 6 , 2 0 1 3 • V o l . 6 • N o . 6 • w w w .T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
Ritz is a Hit
SKI h a l l of f a m e R
Muffy on VAMPS: “We’re not just teaching them to ski or giving them a niche of women they can ski with and relate to, we’re giving them confidence.”
COURTESY ART
La Boheme Beckons BY KAREN BOSSICK
W
hen “La Boheme” takes the stage of the Wood River High School Performing Arts Theater next Wednesday, Sun Valley Opera will mark a new high note. “La Boheme” is the first staged opera the organization has produced since it was founded 11 years ago. Sun Valley Opera is marking its milestone with a three-day Winter Extravaganza that includes a glamorous Diva Cocktail Party featuring performances by the stars of “La Boheme,” including Tony Award winner Lisa Hopkins Seegmiller, on Feb. 11. A Broadway & Beyond concert will follow on Feb. 12, featuring “La Boheme” stars singing favorite show tunes, such as “Memory” from “Cats,” and operatic numbers. A fully staged production of Utah Lyric Opera’s “La Boheme” will cap the three-day extravaganza on Feb. 13. The Sun Valley Opera staged a production of Donizetti’s comic opera, “Don Pasquale,” at the Community School Theater with four singers in 2004. But it was not fully staged and there were no subtitles because it was in English. What makes this production possible is the newly remodeled Wood River High School Performing Arts Theater with its state-of-the-art lighting and acoustics, said opera co-founder Frank Meyer. The facility, which holds 500 people, features equipment for subtitles and backdrops. Even the Sun Valley Opera House was not built for a production like this in mind—there are no wings there, no place for artists to change costumes or makeup, Meyer added. “Of course, this particular opera doesn’t require a large set. It’s almost like being in someone’s living room,” he said. “La Boheme,” written by Giacomo Puccini in the mid-1890s, revolves around young bohemians living in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Rodolfo, a poet, falls in love with an embroiderer named Mimi when she borrows some matches for her candles. Alas, it’s not to be a “happily-everafter story.” When Rodolfo realizes he is too poor to care for Mimi when
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Muffy Ritz acknowledges that the name Vamps is a little racey. Better that, she quips, than WIMPS, or Women in Muffy’s Programs. STORY & PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
“C
’mon!” exhorts Muffy Ritz, dangling a bunch of wine glasses in front of a line of female skiers. Each woman skate skis past her, taking a glass and gulping its contents before tossing it aside in the snow. It looks like a game. But Ritz is teaching her Vamps the finer points of grabbing liquid refreshment during a race like the Boulder Mountain Tour without having to stop. Ritz has taken women places they never thought they would go since she started her Vamps—Vomen and Muffy’s Programs—16 years ago. She’s gotten them racing in the Boulder Mountain Tour. She’s taken them to the 50-kilometer American Birkebeiner in Wisconsin, putting them up in the Ritz family home where dear old Mom regales them with stories of her exuberant child. And next week she’s taking 18 Vamps to Italy to race in the World Masters Games at the site of the 2008 Torino Olympics while seven others traipse to Birkebeiner. Last Wednesday Ritz was inducted into the Sun Valley Ski Hall of Fame for her role in founding and nurturing what is the largest—and, most would argue, the
most lively—women’s Nordic program in the country. “We’re not just teaching them to ski or giving them a niche of women they can ski with and relate to, we’re giving them confidence,” says Ritz, who moved to Sun Valley from Minnesota in 1990 to coach the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation’s Nordic team under Rick Kapala. “I want them to follow my example, to be motivated, to never give up, to get out of their shell and so something different, to be proud of themselves.” The Vamps had its genesis in a simple request by Ketchum resident Carol Rank, a former competitive horse rider, who wanted Ritz to teach her how to train more effectively. That initial clinic of four has grown to 140, divided into groups with names like the Amps, Champs, Supertramps and Scamps. The coaching staff includes an impressive array of coaches with Olympic and U.S. Ski Team credentials to their names, including Ritz, who once coached the U.S. Cross-Country Ski Team. “The growth of this organization is quite remarkable and each year its numbers grow,” says Jenny Busdon, herself a longtime Nordic instructor. “Muffy has put her heart and soul into making it the huge success it is.”
From Buck Hill, Minnesota, to skinny skis Originally a cross-country runner and alpine ski racer, Ritz took up cross-country skiing on a lark while a student at the University of Colorado. In two years she was ranked the fourth best female skier in the nation. A year later she was named to the U.S. Ski Team. Since, she’s won the prestigious American Birkebeiner race a couple times and she’s won her age category in World Cup Masters competitions numerous times, despite going up against a tenacious Russian woman who pushes her every time. Knowing how women thrive on social events, Ritz kicks off each season with a cocktail party, which segues into other particles such as Dress like a Vamp Day and even a pajama party, in which the women ski around the Sun Valley Nordic Center in their PJs. But feminine touches are served up with a dose of what Ritz calls “castor oil”—tough workouts that she promises will pay off in the long run. Dryland training is like boot camp with women bounding up and down Dollar Mountain and carrying boulders from one spot to another. Each woman is encouraged to tackle the Vamps Challenge,
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Lisa Hopkins Seegmiller