Choreography

Today I limped to the rink with my pulled groin muscle for a choreography lesson. "Choreography" is a term which means "standing around talking about elements and where they go on the ice and in the music while said music blares repeatedly in the background, annoying other skaters." So, even an injured skater can stand around and take part in the fun.

Of course I'm incapable of not skating if I'm on the ice, so we did more than stand around, we "walked through." This is a pretty hilarious term too; it calls to mind tiptoeing around lightly in time to the music while pretending to do the elements. But that's not what we did either.

By the end of two hours we were actually skating the first minute or so of the program. We don't have our actual starting pose (which will no doubt be a highly stylized ballroom dance-like maneuver) or opening steps, but we do have all of our elements mapped out and some connecting steps. Our first element is our level 4 twizzles (callers, you can go ahead and write that number - 4 - down now in case you aren't paying attention in April). We then have some pretty neat footwork to get back together and into our first lift. Coming out of the lift we have a twizzle for me and some nifty steps for Tim. Then we aren't sure what comes next to get us to the middle of the ice, where we do our circular footwork (which is coming along nicely if I do say so myself, and going to the music well).

Our coach asked if we had any "tricks" - meaning signature moves that we "always" perform - to be included. (Always, haha, right, we've performed publicly all of 5 times together, so I think all we are "known for" is showing up.) But we did mention the drape from last year, which we hated. Then we tried to do it and could not remember at all how it went. Some signature move! I just watched the video from last year and I still can't figure out what we did. I guess we're going to need something new.

That's where we stopped today, desperately seeking a signature trick. We're making great progress and we'll continue with another choreography session on Sunday. We are aiming for full run-through ability by the end of September. We are very happy with our revised music choice, which is upbeat and fun, bringing out a new and previously unknown side of our personalities. All of this smiling, sigh, I'll need to get my teeth whitened before we compete this season.