Once upon a time, Stanford recruited a young athlete named Sarah Harding, who dreamed of a college gymnastics career. As a junior, she placed ninth in the floor competition final at the nationals and was named a first-team All-American. Senior year, she served as a team captain, choreographed her own routines and danced with Stanford’s hip-hop group, Jam Pac’d. She shares Stanford’s floor record of a perfect 10 score with only three others.
Then came graduation, and with both feet stuck to the ground, Harding finished her master’s in communication and worked on campus with Undergraduate Research Programs. While searching for a job in media arts, she realized how much she missed the magic of movement. To stay in shape, she began entering fitness competitions and ultimately won the title of Ms. Fitness International. Then, Harding heard that Sea World in San Diego was looking for performers. “I knew how hard the job market was, and I thought, why not?” she says.
Her stint dancing in SoCal was short, however. After two series of shows at Sea World, Harding auditioned for Tokyo Disney, spurred by her longtime interest in Japan. The former gymnast took a huge leap, and landed with fins where her feet had once been. She became Ariel—the Little Mermaid.
“Under the Sea,” a 15-minute prequel to Disney’s popular 1989 movie, The Little Mermaid, is Disney Sea’s most popular live attraction. It tells the story of Ariel, a mermaid desperately curious about the world outside the ocean. Ariel joins other larger-than-life sea creatures swimming around and above the human audience (the entire show is, well, aerial). Harnesses support them, and computer-programmed tracks move them in all directions. Ariel’s antics include flipping, rolling and diving in midair—all while lip-syncing three English songs and eight minutes of Japanese dialogue. “That’s what has been most challenging for me. It’s actually been teaching me some Japanese,” says the anglophone mermaid.
Ariel sports a red chiffon hairdo (“a really poofy ’89 wave,” Harding says), a flesh-colored unitard complete with seashell bikini top, and a turquoise velvet Lycra fin, covered in jewels, that extends about four feet beyond her toes. It isn’t all glitz and glamour, though. A mermaid must adjust to performing stunts while surrounded by wires, and gain the muscle strength to hold her tail up while executing a 45-degree dive. The harness she wears can become uncomfortable. “I didn’t know hips could callus,” she says.
Nevertheless, it’s fun to be the Little Mermaid. “It’s the closest thing I’ve felt to flying,” Harding says. As she swoops down, the audience waves to Ariel in excitement. “All these people from little girls to grandmas will reach out and stretch to wave and grab your hand,” she says. “It feeds energy back and forth; it’s a high that I feel.”
Though she says she’d like to continue performing (she recently auditioned for Cirque du Soleil), Stanford’s own mermaid is also a Fulbright finalist. If she receives the fellowship, she’ll go to Beijing in the fall to research the educational opportunities open to professional female gymnasts in China. One way or another, she’ll live happily ever after.
—SUMMER MOORE, ’99
