A Ballerina's view

My love for figure skating started when I was really little. In the eighties into the nineties, I

remember being fascinated by the sport and admiring figure skaters like Nancy Kerrigan, Midori Ito, Surya Bonaly, Scott Hamilton, Brian Boitano, Kristi Yamaguchi, Michelle Kwan, then later Oksana Baiul and Tara Lipinski, just to name a few. I was maybe seven or eight and my mother took me ice skating. I fell in love with it, but I remember the rink was far away in Kansas so we didn’t go there often. We opted for roller skating that was much closer to home.

After starting roller skating lessons and starting to compete, it got too serious and time

consuming so we decided to switch to ballet classes instead. At nine, I ended up falling in love with an art form that mixed athleticism and artistry the same way figure skating does. That was all it took for me to fall in love and devote my life to ballet as my profession from the age of 16 until I was into my forties.

Ballet started in a local school nearby then to a bigger more serious ballet school that led me to going away to New York City as a teenager to study at schools like the Joffrey Ballet and the Rock School of the Pennsylvania Ballet. These summers prepared me for fulfilling a lifelong dream of being a professional ballerina. I moved to New York City at the age of 21 leaving Kansas City, the only home I’d ever known.

The big apple presented me with opportunities to become a dancer with several ballet

companies, a Fosse style jazz company and eventually work in film, tv, commercial, theatre and musical theatre. In all the years I danced, the one thing that never stopped was my fascination with figure skating. My mom and I used to watch all the competitions on tv and never missed one Olympic event.

Seeing those skaters in the kiss and cry, I wondered what it was like to have a coach that worked privately with you for years and knew you so well inside and out like figure skaters did. I realized some had maybe a couple of coaches they worked closely with, but in ballet, most start in a school with a full staff of rotating teachers. In a smaller school, you may have one or two main teachers, but corrections were spread amongst all of the many students in class. Private lessons weren’t really a thing until I was maybe 14. At 15, I switched to a more serious ballet school and had a roster of wonderful instructors and guest teachers that lent us ballet idols and prestigious coaches I’d only read about in books.

I have continued to teach ballet intermittently throughout the years, but the dream of working

with ice skaters kept gnawing at me like an itch that needed to be scratched. I so badly wanted to insert myself in the realm of ice skating and throw my two cents in. I always felt that therecould be more emphasis and softer arms and use of what ballet dancers call port de bras. I knew I didn’t like watching the “athletic” ice skaters as much as the expressive balletic ones. I sometimes found myself begging for a skater to show more emotion like the ballerinas on a stage.

I also was drawn to the highly flexible skaters that could hit beautiful positions like hair

cutters, perfectly turned out spread eagles and gorgeous spirals. Conversely, I wished some

dancers used more athleticism like skaters in certain physically demanding roles, too. There are qualities of both crafts that compliment each other, and so very many that overlapped.

Some big differences between ballet and ice skating, is that skaters don’t “spot” when they spin or even jump. I still wonder to this day how they don’t get dizzy with so many revolutions.

Dancers could never accomplish turns effectively without spotting.

Also, in approaching jumps on the ice, you must hike your hip up to achieve height and rotation to complete the skill. In ballet, you must never break your posture as to keep the hips squared.

When skaters learn a new program, they don’t necessarily count their music! I asked one of my skating students,‘Wait, you mean you don’t count the music? How do you time your choreography?’ I was told their coaches edit or splice the music to fit their required components in the specific time frame for competitions. It allows skaters to have more freedom for timing in preparation for tricks or even mistakes. In ballet, you must dance the exact steps to the exact music counted in eights, sixes or sometimes other time signatures if so composed. I still have to get used to NOT counting their music or calling their beautiful skating dresses a “costume”. I proudly say that Ilearn something new every time I show up at the rink.

Some commonalities between the two crafts are physical positions. Like when the leg is in back attitude (bent halfway before it’s grabbed in a catch), or a spiral in skating is the equivalent of an arabesque in ballet. Turnout is the most defining element of ballet and also needed in a skating spread eagle better known as ballet’s second position. A Biellmann is recognized as a scorpion in the dance world and is a highly coveted trick to attain in both disciplines.

These similarities make crossing my knowledge of dance and stage artistry easy to integrate with ice skating skills.

After moving back home to Kansas City in 2020, and settling into a full time job of teaching

ballet and flexibility classes, I took a chance in 2025 and reached out to a local skating coach. She was kind enough to hire me to teach stretch classes and even work privately with some of her amazing skaters. This was a dream I never thought I’d realize until she gave me this opportunity.

Every week I learn more and more about the technical elements, scoring, what programs

require then how to add a a balletic touch to the choreography or how to gear stretches

towards the skaters’ needs or even do some light physical therapy or massage work to help

however I can.

Dipping my toes into this beautiful pond known as the ice skating world has not only inspired

me, but presented an amazing opportunity to teach for Road to Gold where I got to work with

the amazing Gracie Gold, Geoffry Varner, Mira Nagasu and Jeremy Abbott to name a few. Now I’m just looking forward to the next class, lesson or camp to learn even more about the sport that has my heart.

-Gina Artese is a professional ballerina, actress, and model whose work spans both stage and screen.