by Anne Calder | Photos by Daphne Backman

The first Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships was held in 1933 and is the world’s longest-running ice dance competition. The event is currently part of the U.S. Figure Skating National Qualifying Series (NQS). The Lake Placid Ice Dance International was added to the ISU calendar in 2015.

The event has been covered by ice-dance.com since 2003 when its co-founder, Daphne Backman attended the first of her twenty-two Lake Placid Championships. That includes 2021 that was held at the Skating Club of Boston.

“My first trip to Lake Placid was in 2003. A friend of mine had attended the year before and had sent me a video. She recommended that I join her the next year because the focus was 100% ice dance.

“I kept going because it was a summer event that showcased programs early in the season and because the focus was solely on ice dance. At the time it was the only event that was focused just on ice dance. I also loved the Lake Placid atmosphere and community.”

In 2025, the website interviewed several ice dance teams who were making their debuts as new couples, ones who had moved up to a new level and those who have been attending for many seasons.

Anna Waugh (13) & Matt Jacoby (16) train at the Ice Works in Philadelphia with Slava Uchitel temporarily while their home base in Ardmore – Philadelphia Skating Club & Humane Society – is under repair. Both have been skating for eleven years. While Waugh has done ice dance for six, Jacoby has been ice dancing for three and a half.

The novice duo was happy with their free dance skate to “Jack is Back” (Original Mix) by Dave Floyd and “Shake a Tall Feather” (with the Blues Brothers) by Ray Charles.

“The partnership is only seven weeks old,” Jacoby noted. “We’ve already made a lot of progress, and we have a lot of things to work on.”

Waugh added that included developing stamina, repetition of bits and pieces and the judges critiques.

Waugh likes ice dance because there are no jumps. Everything else is fine. Jacoby likes the focus on skating skills and expression. That way you can focus on performing, rather than doing a series of elements.

The team prefers up-beat and happy music. Waugh prefers it to have an up and down beat kind of like The Hunger Games. Jacoby previously used some jazzy music that’s more upbeat. Once you get into the slow style with long extensions, then you speed up at the end. He likes that general structure.

If given a private lesson by ice dancers, Waugh and Jacoby chose different names.

Waugh chose Madison Hubbell and Scott Moir, while Jacoby really likes Christina Carreira & Anthony Ponomarenko. “Their skating has just been beautiful. It would be awesome. I would also like to have a lesson from Ian Somerville and Logan Bye.”

The teammates both love Lake Placid. “I’ve been here before. It’s a great competition. There’s great people around,” said Waugh. “I’m just happy to be in Lake Placid,” added Jacoby. “This is my favorite competition. Afterwards, I’m looking forward to going to the ice cream shop with the other teams. It’s finally after the competition, so it’s going to be fun.”

Natalie Leitan & Nathan Leitan train in Rockville, Maryland with Dmytri Ilin. The twosome began skating together in 2022. Nathan skated with a previous partner for two years – 2018-2020; Natalie has only skated with Nathan.

The duo shared their favorite program from the current season.

“I love our opening free dance song. It’s something new that we’ve never done before,” Natalie said. “It’s “Ease on Down the Road” (reprise) (The WIZ) by Nichelle Lewis, Avery Wilson, Kyle Freeman & Phil.

“My favorite program is our Quickstep pattern. It’s “Four Minutes” by Madonna and Justin Timberlake. Everyone’s favorite,” added Nathan added.

The siblings both attend public school. Natalie will enter eighth grade; Nathan who will be an eleventh grader is already looking toward college to perhaps study engineering, which includes physics.

“Skating is a lot about physics,” Nathan asserted. “Coach Dima is always talking about physics.”

The team earned a fourth place finish and stood on the Lake Placid Championship podium for the second time. In 2023 as an Intermediate team, the sister and brother also placed fourth for their first Lake Placid medal.

Their next competition is Skate Detroit, August 20-23 in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

“However, after Lake Placid, our family is going to the beach in Maryland,” Nathan said with a grin while twisting the pewter medal around his neck.

Anaelle Kouevi & Yann Homawoo are second year junior competitors. The duo who is coached by Elena Novak, Alexei Kiliakov and Pierre Souquet-Basiege in Leesburg, Virginia, became a team in 2018.

“The fact that we are cousins is one factor, but we were training at the same Academy, so we decided to become a team,” said Homawoo. “We’ve been skating together ever since.”

The move up a level to Juniors last season involved a new kind of pattern dance. It was a weird, but not too hard adjustment that Kouevi uniquely described. “The fact is that we basically just got to do a free dance with a pattern that utilizes all our skills.”

The duo thinks Lake Placid is very special.

“It’s a really cool rink,” Kouevi said. “It looks very grand, unlike a lot of rinks we’ve been to. There’s a lot of culture around. It’s familiar to us which makes it even better.”

“It’s a very historical place with all the things that went on in 1992 and 1980,” Homawood  added. “It was very nostalgic for us to come back for our seventh season.

Kouevi & Homawoo discussed their Four Seasons Free Dance.

“It’s a less airy interpretation and more of a modern one of the dance, with more grounded choreography to show our power and the way we skate,” said Homawoo.

“We decided with our coach to bring a more modern approach to it, instead of the classical vibe other people have done in the past. We think that will show off our own personal skills and also represent a story we want to tell,” added Kouevi.

Earlier in the day of our interview, the cousins received a special announcement from USFS, which they shared with IDC.

“We are going to be representing the United States of America at the Junior Grand Prix in Ankara, Turkey.”

“I’ve never been to Turkey before, let alone for skating,” Kouevi said. “I’ve never been to another country for skating. I’m excited to do my best there, and see everything that goes on over there. I’m just really excited. Obviously there’s a little bit of nerves, but mostly it comes from the excitement.”

“I’m excited to be on the International stage and show what I can do to the entire world and prove to the U.S. that we are a good team, and we’re solid,” Homawoo added. “That’s why they chose us for this opportunity. I want to focus on my training to be able to achieve what I want to do.”

Anaelle and Yann will be joined in Turkey by Leesburg, Virginia training mates Annalise Stapert & Maxim Korotcov.

Marian Carhart (12) & Denis Bledsoe (17) train with Marina Zoueva and Coach Ilia Tkachenko. The Estero, Florida based ice dancers are the 2025 U.S. Novice National Champions after winning the event in Wichita, KS. The team made its Lake Placid junior debut during the July 2025 event.

The athletes shared their thoughts on the move to the new level.

“Well, it’s more interesting than novice,” Bledsoe said. “The programs, the elements, the events are more interesting. I really enjoyed these programs [below] that we made this season.”

Their rhythm dance is set to Aqua’s “My Oh My” and “Barbie Girl” and their free dance is “And the Waltz Goes On” by André Rieu & Johann Strauss Orchestra.

Carhart’s points about moving to juniors were a bit more social.

“I thought it was very exciting to compete in Juniors with all the big kids. It was a big adjustment and a totally different experience than Novice. I’m so glad we’re here, and I look up to all the older girls. They are all so amazing. I’m so happy we’re in Junior. I’m happy with our program. I think we did a beautiful job.”

Carhart acknowledged her biggest adjustments. “Probably making the programs was hard because it had new elements. Everything was hard to adjust to them and get them clean, especially the Rhythm Dance because it was our first time ever. That was quite hard to master, but we have a lot of fun doing it, so it was all worth it.

The team next competes at Skate Detroit in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

Back in Florida, both are separately home schooled, Carhart’s favorite subject is Math. Bledsoe loves History.

Aneta Vaclavikova (14) & William Lissauer (18) are a new Junior ice dance team that trains in Newington, Connecticut with Melissa Gregory and Denis Petukhov. Vaclavikova is from Slovakia and began skating at age four and ice dance at eleven. Nine years ago in 2016, Lissauer competed at Lake Placid as a pre-juvenile.

Vaclavikova and Lissauer had a spectacular 2025 Lake Placid Championships debut – skating  well and ending up on the podium.

“It’s really nice. We haven’t been together that long. This season is a learning one for us,” Lissauer explained.  “It feels good to put out these programs and get on the podium. The past couple of weeks there’s been some hardships with the training, but we were able to overcome it and skate pretty strongly here.

“I’m really happy that we ended like this on the podium. It all went really well, and I’m really happy to be here,” Vaclavikova added.

The duo shared their emotions about when they stepped on the ice and looked around to see people clapping.

“I was so happy. I love performing. It was like so amazing,” Vaclavikova said. “It’s very heartwarming having all these people cheering for us. We did what we came here to do, and we’re pretty happy.” added Lissauer.

The duo discussed their season plans. “We’re going to go back to training, make a couple of adjustments to the programs and hopefully come back stronger,” Lissauer said. 

“We can’t compete internationally because Aneta represented SVK at the 2025 Junior World Championships in February/March, so we have to wait a year until we can go international again. This season for us is more just building our connection on the ice, shaping how we move together, just the fine details, then next year, hopefully, come back pretty strong and doing well internationally.”

Vaclavikova does online school, while recent high school graduate Lissauer is taking a gap year.

Vaclavikova has two older brothers, Lukas and Tadeas, who are also ice skaters and train in Italy. Aneta was accompanied to Lake Placid by her father and small dog, Snowy.

Caroline Mullen & Brendan Mullen are the reigning U.S. Junior National bronze medalists and competed at the 2025 World Junior Championships. The siblings made their official senior debut at the Dallas Classic in mid-July. In Lake Placid. They skated in the senior LPIDI event for the first time.

Brendan spoke about their Rhythm Dance experience. “It wasn’t our strongest performance, but we’re happy to be here. You’ve got to work your way up. It’s a different ballgame from Juniors – different fields – different judging – It’s all just different!”

He continued discussing the general senior adjustments. “Besides all the different elements you have two more in the free dance; the rhythm dance is completely different. Also general performance, for sure. In seniors, that’s an important part of it; in juniors it’s more technical. In seniors, the performance makes or breaks them.”

Caroline agreed. “All the skaters are really so technically strong, so your performance is what makes you stand out. We’ve been training very hard, and we’ve improved in practice. Now we have to put it out in competitions.”

Caroline shared her thoughts about their free dance to Danse Macabre. “We’re really excited to perform it and show what we’ve been working on. It’s one of the most characterized free dances we’ve ever done.”

“We love Lake Placid,” Brendan said. “It’s so special making a senior debut. Skating out to the center ice in that role is a different environment. It’s not the same. You’re entering the rink with a bigger crowd, more cheering fans. Everything is so more advanced.”

The team has spent the summer months in Novi, Michigan training with Igor Shpilband and team.

“We love it, but we’ll be back in Virginia once our college classes at George Mason University start up again.”

Eva Pate & Logan Bye chose “Enter Sandman” by Metallica and “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC for their 2025 rhythm dance.

Right from the first announcement of their names, the crowd really got going. The duo shared their excitement about performing the 1990’s program.

“It was fun and full of energy,” Pate said. The skate was great. The crowd was clapping along. I was really proud of our first competition this season. It was really nice to have that support from the audience.”

“Our first time out there was really fun,” Bye added.

Pate & Bye previewed their Free Dance scheduled for the next day.

“We’re skating to The Lion King and telling the whole story of Simba and Mufasa in four minutes,” Pate explained. “It’s a lot to fit in. It’s a really fun program. I love it. The music is great.”

“It will be a little bit different from today’s rhythm dance,” noted Bye. “It’s definitely full of emotion. We’ll skate our best and try really hard and obviously see what we can do.”

The team shared that Anjelika Krylova choreographed their free dance and although they have worked with her a little bit in the past when she’s come to town, this was the first time she has created a full program for them. 

“We worked very well together,” Pate said. “It took us about four days to do the whole program, so it went really fast.”

Bye added, “It’s definitely a little bit different than normal. Part of it was having Pasquale (Camerlengo) there at the rink since we only had Angelique here for a limited time.”

The program has continued to progress since Krylova returned to Russia. 

“She’s been able to keep in touch just a little bit to make sure everything is as she sees the vision,” Bye said. “A lot of it has been up to Pasquale and Igor (Shpilband) making sure that it’s refined and everything is finished and polished as it should be. We definitely made some small edits to her original choreography as we’ve needed based on how everything is going to fit together. Also, how in our training if something feels off, and we need to change it, we can.”

Pate and Bye were definitely excited to perform the program the next day.

After the free dance performance, Bye shared his thoughts.

“I thought the performance was really nice. It was great to have the crowd here. As the first competition, it’s always a little nerve-wracking. Eva and I gave it our all today. We really left nothing on the table. We knew there was nothing to lose, so we went out there with every intention of showing what we’ve got. I always strive for a little more performance – keeping it up to the best of our ability.

“I would say it’s on par with Riverdance as far as stamina and staying with it all the way through. It’s maybe slightly easier, but as far as our programs, it’s one of our favorites. It’s definitely a work in progress. We’re excited to get back to training.”