ISO: My Ice Dancing Mojo

"Did you see her? She looked at me like I was a monster!" Dmytri laughed, referring to a little girl who'd scampered away from him.

"Well..." I shrugged.

"But you know me. She doesn't know me!" he said. Yeah, but I've warned the others.

Sometimes I wonder if Dmytri can tell when I'm having a bad day. There were too many people on the ice. I was nervous about edges, based on past experience. I felt stiff doing crossovers. My swing roll timing was a mess. And I felt trippy doing the step-behinds. ("Trippy" being the technical term.)  If he noticed, he didn't say anything.

However, he did say things like "I kicked you on purpose" as he tried to get me to do better crossovers and "That's it, that's it, that's not" when I was tripping through step-behinds. I laughed. As we worked on swing rolls he taught me the concept of "tracing," which is brilliant. Basically, if I'm skating on my left foot, I'm supposed to move my right leg around as if my right toe were following in the air where my other skate has been on the ice. Get it, "tracing" what my skating leg had done. This automatically made me turn and my right leg slipped right out to where it's supposed to be at the end of the swing roll.

"That was really helpful," I said, excited. "Why do you always keep these really helpful pieces of information from me?"

"I like to watch you struggle, then I tell you what to do," he answered.

It was time to put it all together into something resembling Rhythm Blues. This is my favorite part. I get a few minutes of feeling like a real ice dancer. Except at this lesson. It took three tries before I finally I got through the whole thing. Epic fail.

"It's faster to music," Dmytri explained while I tried to commit the whole thing to memory.

"Can we try one last time?" I asked sheepishly.

We did (he's such a good sport) and at the end he said, "That was close to the right speed."

So, what's a rookie ice dancer to do when she seems to have lost her dancing mojo? There's an app for that. US Figure Skating recently released a series of apps called "Skate Coach." I haven't actually purchased an app yet, but it seems useful - written instruction, diagrams and videos are included. Stick tap to US Figure Skating for including a hockey app as well. Could be worth the $1.99 investment.

It might be a while before my next lesson (my calendar and Dmytri's aren't cooperating), so I have some time to practice the bejeezus out of this dance. Next time I see Dmytri, I'll be the queen of this...