by Anne Calder | Photos by Daphne Backman

Effie (Xinyu) Chen & Gordei Chitipakhovian (Skating Club of Boston) partnered in 2025 and represent the United States on the Junior level. Their individual skating journeys began on separate continents – Asia / Europe.

Skating in China

“I began skating in China, but never went through basic skills,” Chen said. “I came to the U.S. when I was very young and started in juvenile and singles at the Skating Club of Boston.” 

Ice Dance was one of the skating skills offered to improve general overall power and potential in the discipline. Effie Chen and Jack Liu were sharing lessons from Coach Ron Kravette (U.S. Figure Skating ice dance medalist). He suggested they try dancing together for fun.

“And…that’s how I got started in ice dance,” Chen said.

The Juvenile team won bronze at the 2019 Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships followed by a silver medal at the inaugural NQS Ice Dance Final in Hyannis, Massachusetts. The team qualified for the first National Development Camp following the 2020 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in North Carolina.

The Covid pandemic interrupted NQS competitions. Instead, the U.S. Championship Series was held virtually in early 2021 and live in Alpharetta, GA in November, where the team competed at the Novice level.

The duo’s competitive medal-winning partnership spanned four seasons (2019-2022) on the juvenile, intermediate, novice and junior levels.

In 2024, Chen teamed with Kenny Eckert and moved to Novi, MI to train with Igor Shpilband’s group. The partnership lasted only one season after Eckert’s injured knee required surgery. Since the anticipated recovery period was long, the team chose to move on separately.

Skating in Russia

Gordei Chitipakhovian began his early skating journey in St. Petersburg, Russia.

“I was skating for most of my life in free style,” Chitipakhovian said. “Basically, one day my mom convinced me to try ice dance.”

Elizaveta Khort & Gordei Chitipakhovian competed at the junior level (KMS) in Russia, while primarily training with coach Kirill Minov. The team wrapped up their partnership in early 2025, prior to his move to the U.S.

Tryout in Michigan

After Chen and Eckert parted ways, she remained in Michigan while searching for a partner. 

“I thought I would have to take the season off. It was already getting so late and summer competitions were starting soon.” Chen said.

Around 11:00 p.m. one evening, Chen’s phone rang. She was getting ready for a short trip back to Boston. The call was from her coach. It immediately changed her travel plans.

“There’s this guy in Colorado who wants a tryout,” the coach said. 

“Okay,” Chen thought aloud. “Next month we can have a tryout. Afterwards, we’ll see about a second one.” 

“It’s not going to be next month,” the coach added. “You’re having a tryout tomorrow – tomorrow in Michigan.”

The two-day tryout was intense, but successful.   

Training Center

The new partners immediately began training at the Novi Arena with Chen’s Coach Igor Shpilband and team Natalia Deller, Adrienne Lenda and Pasquale Camerlengo.

She had already spent a year training alongside 2026 Olympians Emilea Zingas & Vadym Kolesnik and other elite athletes Eva Pate & Logan Bye, Amy Cui & Jonathan Rogers, Daniela Ivanitskiy & Matthew Sperry. 

“It’s awesome to train with so many high-level skaters,” Chen said. “It really moves you to push yourself to try harder; it’s really inspiring. It’s very cool to see what they do and to say that I want to do that someday. We’re absolutely comfortable here. We have everything we need, and t’s a great environment.” 

Chen spoke about working with Igor Shpilband. 

“He has a lot of really good ideas, and we try our best to bring them to life,” Chen said. “A camp of this caliber, demands a lot from you, and hopefully we are ready to rise to the challenge. He’s an excellent coach and obviously has had so many champions, and you can really see that. 

“Mostly you have to put in the work. Like Igor can tell you what to do, but if you do not do what he says or put in the work, you are not going anywhere. Hopefully, we try our best.”

“He wants the best for all of us and really knows how to do it. Also, we don’t just have juniors / seniors in our group. We have novices and intermediate teams as well.”

“I think we can learn something from all levels. It’s not just looking up to the highest level seniors. I think it’s also training with younger teams as well – you know how they train. I think the variety is awesome.”

Getting to Know You

In addition to choreography, music selections, training routines, etc., the new team needed “getting to know you” time.

Chen described her new partner as genuinely uplifting and very supportive.

“In this sport, people can be very intense, and I think we really balance each other out well,” she noted. “He’s very easy to talk to, and I feel his support every step of the way whether it be a really good practice or a bad one. I find that to be very nice and very easy.”

“I don’t think I can add much more,” Chitipakhovian said. “It’s been very easy to communicate with Effie from the first time we started talking, especially when we started skating on the ice. It just felt like we knew each other. We add to each other and highlight each other’s great spots that we have in our skating.”

“After the first or second day, it felt like we’d already known each other for such a long time, which is really awesome,” Chen added.

Building the Partnership

Effie Chen brought a resume of several years of SCOB training and the additional year at the Novi Arena in Michigan to the new partnership.

“I also played the piano growing up,” Chen said. “I think it helps a lot with musicality. I also cut our own free dance this season.”

Chitipakhovian spoke about his contribution to the partnership. 

“I feel I’m trying to show her off more as the boy partner. I should be more like a frame for the girl to fill it out and show how beautiful she is. I’m not tying to be brighter than her. I’m trying to show how bright she is.”

“To build on that,” Chen added. “I think he does a good job being supportive – and to use the analogy – instead of being a boring picture frame, he’s like a beautiful golden gilded picture frame. What I mean is, it’s not that he disappears easily.”

Competition Debut 

“After we got together in late summer 2025, we had to get a program within three weeks because we were competing at the Challenge Cup Sept.19-20,” Chen explained.

Ten Junior teams competed at the event in Philadelphia, PA. Chen & Chitipakhovian earned the highest Junior Rhythm Dance mark. The newbies received the silver medal for the second highest total score.

Six weeks later at the NQS Ice Dance Final in Henderson, NV, the team won the silver medal and qualified for  the Junior competition to be held in Maryland Heights, MO prior to the 2026 U.S. Championships.

The team, however, missed the opportunity to participate at the event when Chitipakhovian had to fly back to Russia for visa and Federation issues.

“Unfortunately, It was very bad timing” Chen said, “but it’s okay.”

A New Season – 2026-2027

“This year we wanted to get started early since we missed out on quite a lot last season,” Chen said.

“I absolutely agree,” Chitipakhovian added.

And that they did. The team won gold medals at their first two NQS ice dance events –  Dallas Classic and the Lake Placid Championships.

“We feel well prepared, which is nice,” Chen said. “Obviously we have things to work on. Yesterday we had monitoring here in Lake Placid. It was very helpful on things we need to improve and the direction to grow.”

Patterns

“I’m a fan of the patterns. I think it’s great that they decided to bring them back for everyone, including the seniors,” It’s awesome just seeing everyone flying around the ice at home doing the Golden Waltz and the Westminster. Everyone’s in like patterns. I think it’s great!”

“It’s super important to skate in closer hold. That’s what ice dancing is. What separates us from pairs and the other disciplines is the fact that we can skate so close together and just be more connected whether emotionally, physically – all of that. I’m always ready for it.”

Rhythm Dance

The 2026-2027 Junior Rhythm Dance requires One (1) Sequence of the Westminster Waltz evaluated as two (2) sections. Following the updated July 2026 global seminar amendments, the traditional prescribed pattern mapping on the ice is now optional. Teams can design their own routing across the ice as long as the steps are executed consecutively.

“Westminster is much harder than what we did last year with the rhumba / quickstep,” Chen said. “It’s much more challenging with more hold changes, but I think that’s a great thing. You don’t want the sport to be stagnant. You want it always to grow and challenge yourself to be better.”

“We went to Dallas for out first competition,” Chen said. “It was definitely interesting. We came back and made quite a big change. Instead if closing the pattern traditionally, we don’t do that anymore. We’re trying to really fill out the space and have a lot more flow and speed that the traditional pattern was restricting.”

“We’ll see how it works. If it shakes out? Tis the season for experimenting, I think.”

The team’s Rhythm Dance is set to “I See Red” and “Wicked Ways” by Everybody Loves an Outlaw.

Free Dance

“For our Free Dance we are doing music from the Rio soundtrack, which is super fun,” Chen said. “It’s very Latin, but also quite a character program, which is great for us.”

“I’ve been doing Latin ballroom for a couple of years now; I love to dance off-ice. I’ve been wanting to compete Latin for a long time but also wanted some kind of story. I enjoy character programs quite a bit. As a partnership, we have fun on the ice. We really do enjoy singing with each other, so we wanted to bring that to the audience – to show them.”

“The program has a carnival feeling from the music – a great song and a great dance. Hopefully, the audience will get the party vive and feel free to get up and start dancing.”

ICE CHIPS!

Effie Chen trained and competed with the Skating Club of Boston’s Theatre on Ice program for eight years. 

In 2019, Chen’s novice team, Encore of Boston, won gold at the Nations’ Cup Ballet Sur Glace International Theatre on Ice competition in Epinal, France. 

Gordei Chitipakhovian’s recent coach in St. Petersburg, Russia was Kirill Minov, who with partner, Rebeka Kim, skated for South Korea for four seasons. Their final year as a team (2015-16) the duo represented and trained at the Detroit Skating Club, in Bloomfield Hills, MI. The team was coached by Pasquale Camerlengo who currently assists with Chen and Chitipakhovian’s training in Novi.

Chen & Chitipakhovian attend on-line college classes. Chen is studying psychology at Michigan State University. Chitipakhovian is studying to be a coach through a St. Petersburg, Russia University. 

The team has recently received their first Junior Grand Prix assignment for Ankara, Turkey (September 17-19). 

August 19-20 at Skate Detroit, the duo added a third 2026-2027 season gold medal to its collection.