Art & Creativity Quote by Peggy Fleming

Peggy Fleming frames performance not as execution, but as a charged relationship with the moment. “On the ice, in the lights, with the music and the motion” stacks sensory cues like a montage: arena glare, orchestration, speed, risk. It’s a reminder that figure skating has always been half sport, half stagecraft, and that what audiences call “grace” is often a deliberately built feedback loop between body and atmosphere.

The word doing the most work is “flirtation.” Fleming isn’t describing romance so much as a controlled tease with danger, attention, and precision. Flirtation implies give-and-take: you offer a hint of something - a glance, a pause, a surge - and the space answers back with adrenaline, timing, and crowd voltage. That’s the subtext: artistry isn’t soft; it’s strategic. The skater isn’t merely “expressive” because she feels deeply, but because she knows how to convert sensation into readable drama without losing technical command.

Context matters here. Fleming emerged in an era when women’s athletic excellence was still expected to look effortless, even decorative, and when skating’s cultural currency leaned heavily on poise and beauty. By calling it flirtation, she reclaims that aesthetic expectation as an active tool rather than a passive costume. She’s also nodding to something performers rarely admit plainly: the spotlight can be intoxicating, and that intoxication, handled well, becomes fuel - “great energy” - that lifts a program from correct to electric.