Skate Camp - Sunday

Sunday 8am. I am SO TIRED. Off to skate!

Sunday 9:45am. Just got out of Naomi and Peter’s class. We began by doing edge work. Forward and backward lunges, focusing on edges and flow. Then on to crossrolls. The forward ones went okay, but backwards? Thank goodness for Naomi, because she helped me figure them out. Well, sort of, anyways.

Sunday 10:45am. We’ve begun to think about choreography, and how to approach our skating with a sense of musicality. Of course, in order to do that, Peter had us disco dancing on the ice. I am not skilled. But then again, none of us really were. We started to get it better when Naomi and Peter had us doing simple crossovers and chasses, but with us interpreting tempo and timing from the music that was playing. That was great.

Sunday a bit later. I just got out of stretching class. Christine is an amazing teacher. She really knows how to make these stretches real, explaining exactly how each one is relevant to my skating. Although I’m pretty bendy for someone of my size and age, there were a couple of stretches she gave us, for hip flexors, that I was usless at. I obviously have a lot to do in that area!

Sunday 11:45am. Back on ice for compulsory dance class, which we had to abandon when we realised that we were sharing the ice with the pairs. The pairs are awesome to watch, really powerful skaters, but sharing the ice with them meant that we couldn’t complete our patterns. It ended up being fine, because we instead played with choreography. Peter and Naomi were trying to get us to interpret emotion through movement. For example, he gave us the emotion “anger”, and we, as a group, had to try to get that across in our skating. We were doing fine until, in the middle of our dance, two of us crashed into each other and both went flying! Once we got over the shock, everyone burst out laughing. So much for “anger”.

Sunday 12:45pm. The staff sat as a panel, and we were able to ask them questions. I’m not shy, so I piped right up. I asked what they found to be the differences between teaching adults and teaching young skaters. Edward said that adults are very intense. They work hard. He did say that one of the things he sees with some adults is a fear of falling, which an adult must overcome if they are to progress as a skater. Zuzanna said that adults WANT to be there, where sometimes with young kids, they don’t, and that can be hard to deal with as a coach.

Sunday 2:00pm. Naomi split the class into two - the more advanced dancers went with Peter to work on their CDs, and we stayed with Naomi to work on the lower level dances. This was wonderful, because we really got to focus on some of those tricky moves in the Rhythm Blues, Swing and Fiesta. Naomi has a way of explaining things where I totally get it, and am able to fix things that I’ve been struggling with.

Last we had our practice session. This was an open skate, held on two rinks, where we got to ask any coach anything we liked. I did end up meeting Vakhtang, and I'm glad. I commented on his performance at the Ice Theater of NY a few years ago, when he'd done this amazingly hot and funky tango. He looked chuffed that I remembered, and even did a bit of a riff off the number for me. I skipped back and forth between the two rinks - I think I was afraid that I’d miss something. I practiced some of the moves that I’d learned, got the email addresses of some of my fellow skaters, and grabbed some quick snapshots of myself with Vakhtang (!), and Peter and Naomi (!!)

The weekend is over, and all I can say is wow, and wow, and wow. I’d been nervous about attending, but I’m so glad that I went. In fact, I’m already trying to figure out ways to get there again next year!