I began this journey March 15, 2024 but did not begin to blog about it until recently. So here’s a quick re-cap of how my training has gone so far.
I skated ice dance as a child because my parents made me. Then I quit at age 19 and pursued a ballet career instead. Professional ballet training, and then dancing for a ballet company, were formational experiences for me. I will never regret the time I took out of my life and other careers to do it. As a dancer, I learned to view my body objectively, and how to build and train it just like we build any machine. I learned to separate my sense of self from whatever my body is doing and enjoy the process of training it to do anything within its physical limits.
Fast forward, and in January 2024 I decided I would skate. I didn’t know what I was going to do or how far I would go, but for personal reasons I needed to get some skates and try it out. Maybe this was just something I would do for a little while. So I bought some skates and committed to a Summer of Skating, after which I would re-evaluate. “Summer of Skating” because the ballet class in this town closes down all summer, and the only other thing to do is swim in our local pond (which I enjoy), and the rink is air conditioned whereas my living room is not.
The biggest draw of skating was… the rink is close to my house and I can train six days per week. As a dancer my goal in life is to dance every day, something I haven’t done since my ballet career ended. So this seemed like a great opportunity.
But how would I learn how to skate? I committed to not having a regular coach, at least at first, because I had been through a lot of training since I last skated, and there were things I could do with that, at least at first. The head coach at the rink thought I was crazy.
The skates came in March, and I began with daily public skate sessions. My first 20 minutes on the ice I thought I must have made a mistake… Oh No I’m Gonna Fall and Die!!! That wore off, and then I tried skating backwards and felt the same thing all over again. And I got terrible blisters from the boots, partly because I am trained to point my feet so hard all the time. And my legs were completely exhausted after 45 minutes, a problem that resolved through conditioning.
I took a few freestyle lessons, and it was a lot of fun re-learning basic spins and some single jumps. But inside I felt that what we do in the dance studio is far more sophisticated. I wasn’t sure that working on six jumps and an assortment of spins could hold my interest long term. Maybe I wanted to try more ice dance; I had a few lessons in that too.
In May I went to Alaska for two weeks, where I work. I brought my new skates and met coach Debbie, who carried a scribe with her. I found out she loves figures and asked her to teach me for the two weeks I would be there. So we did 2-3 lessons per week. From the outset I asked “how does anyone learn skating without doing these exercises”?
I returned home smitten and signed up to join World Figure Sport (WFS), which celebrates and promotes figures. I began serious study of Figures in July 2024, including a weekly Zoom class with WFS Chef de Mission, Mrs. Kelly. The Zoom class, on the floor, is incredible: Mrs. Kelly has been able to give me most of the information I need to learn to skate figures, over Zoom. And she packs a lot into 30 minutes.
I figured might structure my training like a ballet class: 50% figures, 25% ice dance, 25% jumps and turns. But the problem is… I was so happy skating in circles learning things about my body, I would spend the entire hour just on figures and then be too tired to do anything else safely (remember my body needed conditioning to skate for longer). Soon I realized I was just going to work on figures.
And thus I was not going to doing USFSA tests in Ice Dance, or Singles, or Skating Skills; but rather I would just engage with the WFS exam curriculum of Figures and Fancy Skating, at least for now. That seemed like a risk because it’s such a different choice, but the fact is this was clearly the most effective and safest way for me to train; and technical skills, once developed, allow us to do whatever we want. So if I want to do USFSA stuff later, I’m sure that will be no problem.
In August I took the World Figure Sport Art of Skating — Pewter Exam in Lake Placid, which is similar to the old ISU preliminary figures test. I didn’t know what to expect, or how I would do, because I’d never done a figures test before. It was a fantastic experience.
In October I went to the World Figure Sport Figures and Fancy Skating Championship on Black Ice, where I got to meet and learn from others for the first time. The top people in the world were there, and what they are doing is…. just incredible. I entered the International Open division of the competition and faced so many new challenges, for example how to lay out a figure without any initial guide marks on the ice. I also shared a Fancy Skating program, which I designed to be really simple. Why? Because at the time I made it, all I had to work with (in a clean manner) was forward edges. I did slip in a bit of stuff I could re-use from my ballet training: nice attitudes, arabesques, working the audience with my upper body. I learned a lot and made new friends and no longer felt isolated, it was a successful week. Oh yes, I also won Gold for the International Open Division. What a surprise! Hey, I didn’t make the rules…
I began working on the Bronze Exam in September. This is such a big step up from the Pewter exam. I learned how to twist my spine around to see where I’m going while skating backwards. My back muscles hurt a lot, and I began to wonder if this was going to damage them. So I brought the fascinating new body positions into the dance studio, where I practiced them on the floor and started making dances out of them. More importantly, I worked through ways to twist and untwist the spine in a safe and harmonious manner.
Backwards 8’s have been quite the challenge. At first my goal was, especially with backwards inside, to not fall over and get around 360 degrees. Then it became to get back anywhere close to the center. And I’ve been refining and discovering from there. I have dubbed Backwards Inside the Dark Horse of Figure Skating. I took the Bronze Exam in November and did well on it. But not as well as they really need to be long-term. Now the plan is to improve accuracy and make it a lot tighter, to attain World Class level in these figures. So I’m focusing on anything that causes wobble in these figures, and learning how to address those issues.