Artists and activists rewrite the rules of synchronized swimming
It’s not all mermaids and sequins.
Synchronized swimming, aquatic ballet, artistic swimming… call it what you like we’re deep into the current craze. The athletic sport reached a zenith last year when the Chinese took gold at the Paris Olympics, and then couture cobbler Cristian Louboutin staged his Spring/Summer 2025 show in Paris’ famed Piscine Molitor. But it’s not all 1000-watt smiles and gelatine hairdos. Synchronized swimming is shifting with social currents as artists and activists rewrite the rules. We’ve gathered some of our favorite aquatic moments in anticipation of the 2025 World LGBTQIA+ Aquatics Championship in Washington D.C. at the end of May.
Subversive Sirens
“We are curvy, fat, and strong. We are able–bodied and have disabilities. We are lesbian and queer. We are Black, Asian, white, and multiracial. We are cisgendered and non-binary. We are allies and accomplices to each other and our communities”. The Subversive Sirens came about when Signe Harrida and Suzy Messerole were perusing the Gay Games website in search of a sport to adopt and landed on synchronized swimming. Since the two friends first competed as the Subversive Sirens in 2018, they have grown into a team with a mission to spread “the joy of synchronized swimming as a liberation practice.”
“We are curvy, fat, and strong. We are able–bodied and have disabilities. We are lesbian and queer. We are Black, Asian, white, and multiracial. We are cisgendered and non-binary. We are allies and accomplices to each other and our communities”
Follow the Subversive Sirens at 2025 World LGBTQIA+ Aquatics Championship, Washington D.C., May 31 - June 5, 2025
Synchronized swimming but make it Wes Anderson
Slovakian artist Maria Svarbova made pools the focus of her study of Communist-era architecture. In her book Swimming Pools, armies of identical swimmers perform dream-like synchronized sequences playing on the tension of symmetry and repetition to reflect the scale and formality of the architecture.
Harlem Honeys and Bears: Your grandma’s swim team
Known to its members simply as the Bathhouse, Hanborough Recreation center on Harlem's West 135th Street, is home to the Harlem Honeys and Bears a synchronized swimming team for seniors. The name was inspired by '70s slang where women were called “honeys” and, as one team member says, “bears love honey!” As well as competing in traditional swim races, the Honeys and Bears create and perform water ballet.
But their main mission is to teach the local Black community to swim. According to an article in the Washington Post last year, 64 percent of Black children in the United States cannot swim, and Black children between the ages of 10 and 14 are nearly eight times more likely to drown in swimming pools than their white counterparts. The Honeys and Bears spread the message that swimming can be learned by anyone, at any age.
When Beyoncé calls
Artistic swimmers Philicia and Tamar Saunders founded Black Swans Synchro after performing in Beyoncé's Mood 4 Eva, from her 2020 visual album Black is King. Queen Bey’s team had to recruit black swimmers from Jamaica, highlighting the scarcity of representation in the sport. The sisters were on the first all-Black synchro team from South LA in '97 which gained attention for their sharp routines set to hip hop and pop, bringing Black culture to a sport still associated with the classic Hollywood Esther Williams aesthetic.
Saturday Night Live
For the 1984 Olympics, Saturday Night Live aired its now-famous skit with Martin Short and Harry Shearer playing male Olympic hopeful synchronized swimmers — despite the fact that they could barely swim.
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Dragon, rest your head on the seabed
Dragon, rest your head on the seabed is a performance conceived and choreographed by artists Pablo Lilienfeld and Federico Vladimir for six synchronized swimmers blending dance, sport, and speculative fiction through a hydro-feminist lens. The pool’s surface becomes a screen where a collective, fluid self emerges through synchronized swimming. Departing from the competition norms, the artists embrace imperfection, asynchrony, and rest. “Usually, at synchronized swimming competitions the judges deduct marks for not smiling, for having strands of hair out of place, or for touching the bottom of the pool. In this disheveled dragon, similarity, difference, synchrony and asynchrony all coexist. It doesn’t always smile and not only does it touch the bottom of the pool, it lies in rest there.”
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One last thing
Watching Artistic Swimming upside down somehow makes it even more impressive and mildly confusing, like elegant chaos in reverse.
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