Dance Clinic with Naomi Lang and Peter Tchernyshev

My club had an ice dance clinic with Naomi Lang and Peter Tchernishev. 2.5 hours, nothing but Naomi and Peter.

For those who don't know, Naomi and Peter were, I believe, five time US National Champions. I was slightly nervous before class, maybe a bit star-struck. That wore off quickly as we started skating.

They both taught the class, going from beginner moves to advanced - so, we started with stroking (which is hard as heck to do right, even the advanced students learnt something), then on to some edge work, then to chasses, then chasses with what Peter called "the wicked edge". At that point, I had to slip away to take my own lesson with my coach. When I rejoined the group, they were doing triple twizzles...yeah, right...so I went and practiced something else until later, when we all came back together and did more edge work, then backward crossovers, which, again, are very hard to truly do right. By then I was exhausted.

I tried to take special notice of the following details because people do like to know and seem to always ask:

They both did look fabulous, and they skate beautifully together. Peter was clean-shaven, his hair a bit long. He wore a very nice jumper, oversized and sort of beigy, which went well with his tanned skin. He wore his 2002 Worlds pants, dark blue I think, and I could see some beigy, old, ratty leg warmers just under the cuffs, which were unzipped. His skates were pretty beat. Naomi looked great. She was quite tan, her hair long with a bit of a highlight in the front. She wore a sleeveless zip fleece, light blue, 2002 Worlds sleeveless zipper thing over a white T shirt that had sort of cut sleeves, I'm not describing that well. I forget her trousers - they were dark. No leg warmers. Her skates were also beat, but not as badly as Peter's. I took a couple of pictures, below.

They looked fit, and their unison was impressive. Power, speed, flow - looked great, the short time they really skated together in front of the class. I was with my coach at the time, and she just kept saying, "very nice, very nice..." under her breath.

Towards the end, Peter took my hand and tried his best to improve my back crossovers. I was miserable at them, useless - what he did has made me completely rethink my technique*. He also joked about a near-collision that my friend and I had by the boards. He'd only just got done saying that the basics are very important. Then, when we almost crashed, he said that stopping was especially key to skating. As an aside, he said that we should all practice that later.


*I've since re-rethought my technique. I asked my coach about what Peter was telling me to do, and she explained that (I may not explain this well) there are two methods out there - one, Russian, which Peter and Naomi follow, has a lot of what I'd call "bounce". The other, what my coach is teaching me, is much smoother. It's a stylistic difference.

Peter really did stump me. I'd been working so long on getting things smooth, one level, on that particular move, and then he's telling me to do the exact opposite.