Figure Skating: The Glamour of NYC

Figure skating has long been the most stylish, most glamourous part of the Olympic Winter Games.  However, figure skating also has a very glittering past.

            You’ve heard of Fifth Avenue.  Before it was a fashionable destination, stylish New Yorkers flocked there for skating. Private skating ponds required membership but gave their members an atmosphere of live music, held splendid costume balls, and drew in the chicest skaters.  Can you imagine skating to the sounds of an orchestra, while being dressed to the nines and alongside the most fashionable people?

Skating also took to the stage in the era:  A 1915 Broadway show included a leading lady who was also a skating prodigy and some hotels had iced stages for shows.  Harper’s Bazaar would also even publish fashionable skating dresses and hairstyles for skating.

Skating united itself with these dazzling, sophisticated lifestyles. One of the most elegant avenues in the world owes its glamour, in part, to figure skating.

Photos:  via Untapped Cities, 6sqft

Christmas Gift Guide 2018

It's that time of year!  We absolutely love Christmas shopping--there's just something so meaningful about discovering something lovely and fitting for your friends and family.  To help you out a bit, we've assembled a list of some gifts that will be a figure skater's favorites.  From the handmade to the practical to the simply fun, we hope you're inspired and discover something unique to give the skater you love. (Links located below images.)

• Watch/buy Ice Castles

• Steve Madden Zigzag Touchscreen Gloves, Macy’s, $18

• HIPeace hip pad, LiveKühn, $39.99

• Booklaces handcrafted by Illyria Pottery, $66.10

• Camille Ballerinas, Repetto PARIS, $345

• Volume Glamour Mascara for Women, 
  Bourjois, $14.95

• Stoked Strawberry LIPeace, LiveKühn, $2.99

• Foothill Tank by Athleta, $49.99

• Stone Stud Earrings, Ralph Lauren, $28

World Ballet Day

Some of the countless reasons why figure skating remains such a beloved sport include artistry, elegance, and grace.  However, these attributes are not always attributable to skating itself.  In academics, mathematics is foundational for the sciences.  In the arts, ballet lies behind all great figure skating.

Skating never taught me that a dancer’s posture is beauty itself.  Skating never taught me how to move my body with such precision and freedom.  Skating never taught me that one sweeping motion of the arm feels like motion lingering through time and space.  Ballet instructed me in the quick snap of a jump; ballet taught me to esteem both strength and flexibility.  Ballet instructed me its rich artistic history, its gorgeous lines, its movements, and its passion.

Ballet taught me in a way nothing else ever could to communicate the emotion of my soul in the motion of my body.

In celebration of World Ballet Day, I would encourage you to continue in ballet or sign up for your first class!  Ballet will not only mold you into an artist and increase your sensitivity to the feelings within music, it will also help develop your flexibility and strength (especially your core and static strength).

If you’re looking for some inspiration, check out this clip of my favorite ballerina in my favorite ballet by my favorite composer:  Svetlana Zakharova and Denis Rodkin in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.  Also watch this rehearsal video from the Royal Opera House where Fumi Kaneko and Nehemiah Kish dance the Sugar Plum Fairy pas de deux from The Nutcracker.  (I have fond memories of watching The Grand Rapids Ballet Company’s version of this as a child in their production and it is still one of my favorites!)

Happy world ballet day.  May you jeté all day.