By Matteo Morelli | Photo by Daniel Linden

On August 10th and 11th, the Streatham Ice Arena in London, UK, hosted the Solo Ice Dance Training Camp, the first of its kind in the British capitol city.

The event was organised and led by Candice Towler-Green (ISU Technical Specialist, ISU Solo Ice Dance Working Group, and Level 4 Coach), Pippa Towler- Green (Level 4 Ice Dance Coach and former World and European championships competitor for Great Britain) and Daniel Linden (Level 2 Ice Dance Coach and former international competitor).

They planned the training camp to take place over two days and with two different target groups in mind: the first day focused on novice to senior skaters, the second on adult skaters. The idea was clear: to give solo ice dancers a chance to improve their skills and share the ice with other skaters, learning from the coaches on the camp and from each other.

The camp started taking submissions a month before the planned dates. Applicants were asked to complete an online form which allowed the coaches, supported by Lily Lanario, to receive the required information to allocate skaters to groups matching their skill levels.

The positive response showed how a camp like this was on demand: they ended up having 32 skaters on the Saturday and 31 on the Sunday, with some coming all the way from Cardiff and Deeside in Wales, and also from Sheffield, in the north of England. 

On the first day, the novice to senior camp had two groups with a full-on programme that started with edge classes, different exercises to push knee bend, posture, and power on the ice.

A few of the skaters in attendance were quite experienced and helped with demonstrations of some of the exercises: junior solo ice dance British champion Lily Bakhtiari, senior solo ice dance champion Jessica Marjot, Abby Peacock, which this season moved up to seniors in solo ice dance and has competed abroad, and senior ice dancer Elena Whalley.

During the first part of the day, the coaches structured the camp to rotate one group on the ice with one other group off the ice doing work in the gym and completing stretching sessions with Gill Slatter, the mum of Ashley Slatter, British junior ice dancer skating with Atl Ongay-Perez. The junior team was also at the camp and delighted everyone by showing their new free dance programme.

Pippa Towler-Green wanted to add something different to the agenda. Some time ago, she attended a camp that was all about the choreography of Carolina Kostner, the Italian figure skating legend that is well know for her grace and artistry on the ice. Since attending that camp, Pippa TowleriGreen decided to introduce that choreographic style into her teaching, as she thinks it will benefit the skaters. With the sport evolving rapidly, it is important to adapt to the changes and go beyond teaching footwork on the ice: this is why the coaches brought in more body movement exercises into the camp, allowing the participants to experiment and explore new ideas.

The second part of the camp started with all skaters on the ice split in different groups, to work on focussed elements such as twizzles, edge poses such as spirals (arabesques), spread eagles and more, with groups rotating to allow everyone to work on all the elements.

After that, all the skaters worked together on body movement, improv and co-ordination. Within the groups, the idea was to give younger skaters in novice the same chances as the more advanced skaters on the ice. The coaches wanted the lower level skaters to share the ice with more experienced skaters like Bakhtiari and Marjot, as this is important experience for them and can be very inspiring.

The day ended with the participants dividing up into a few groups to work on expressing different emotions and creating short pieces of choreography inspired by the emotions they picked, which they then had to perform in front of all the other groups and coaches who were tasked to guess the emotions that were being displayed. A group photo (kindly provided by Daniel Linden for us) closed the day, capturing the spirit of collaboration and fulfillment after all the hard work.

The Adult camp on the Sunday followed the same structure of the Saturday camp, with two groups to start with to then end up with one unique group. Despite of the differences in skills level from the previous day, most of the exercise were the same as the exercise of the novice to senior group.

A lot of very enthusiastic adult skaters committed to what the coaches presented them with: they shared they enjoyed feeling challenged and this made them want to push themselves harder whilst also enjoying what was being worked on.

The organisers were extremely pleased with the outcome of the Solo Ice dance Training Camp and with the commitments that each skater put into it. With the positive feedback received so far, they will consider hosting more events like this in the near future.