Ice Dance Weekend

Over the weekend, I went to an Ice Dance Weekend hosted by my home skating club. Around 40 participants came from far and wide to enjoy many hours of social ice dance and some instructional clinics. I've never participated in something quite like this before, but I throughly enjoyed it and *highly* recommend it if you do any ice dance at all.

So why should you do an ice dance weekend?

1. Meet new people
   Who doesn't like to meet others who enjoy the same activity as you do? You'll meet people of all different stripes, at all different levels and ages. One girl was a synchro coach who skated international level dances with amazing skill. One woman who skated her heart out this weekend was in her 80s!
2. The opportunity to dance with many partners
   This was hard at first. The first night, I had a hard time skating with a partner. I felt like I was going to run some partners over and like I was tugging away from others. I shied away from dancing with others and skating the dances by myself. But as the weekend went on, it was less of an issue (and kind people kept asking me to partner with them!). I was able to see for myself the importance of some of the partnering tips that my coach has given me because I could see how things went wrong with partners who aren't as good as my coach.
3. Learn new dances, tips, techniques
   I got to learn the steps to the bronze dances and even try out the willow waltz and hickory hoedown with some brave gentlemen. In the workshops, I learned a small part of the Killian and we worked on quick crossrolls from the paso doble. I'm nowhere near being able to do those dances, but I can add working on those steps to my practice repertoire, even at my level.
4. Improve the dances you're working on and review old ones
   After many more run-throughs than I'd normally practice in a single weekend, I feel much more confident about the pre-bronze dances that I'm hoping to test soon. We skated the lower level dances a lot because lots of people know them and it gave me the chance to work on pointing my toes, swinging my leg through close on swing rolls, proper pushing on progressives and adding more expression with my arms and head.
5. Practice with music (a lot)
   If your area is anything like mine, there's not a lot of ice dance. You practice on freestyle and the tweens monopolize the CD player. Once, a coach turned off my compulsory dance music in the middle of a dance and was surprised to find out that somebody was practicing to it. As if anyone would listen to compulsory dance music for fun! But ice dancing to music is waaaaay more interesting than just counting it out in your head and at this weekend, we had lots of modern music at the right tempo for various dances. Though I have to admit, it was a little strange to do the Fiesta Tango to "Gettin' Jiggy with It". 
6. Get inspired by other dancers
   Seeing some of the other skaters was a reminder of how much I have to learn about ice dance. There were some seriously amazing ice dancers there. I learned that I really do want to continue ice dancing because the higher dances look so cool and I want to be able to participate in more dances next year!

When I got home on Sunday, after almost as many hours on the ice as hours I'd slept over the weekend, I felt like I'd been run over by a truck, but I was jazzed. I couldn't fall asleep because my brain seemed to be afraid that I'd forget the steps to the Willow Waltz and kept playing them over and over again. I can't wait to have the opportunity to ice dance socially again. I may wait until I'm more advanced to travel out of my city for an ice dance weekend, but you better believe I'll go to more ice dance weekends in the future!