Edge Class – Part 3 (Chris Conte)

Choreographer Chris Conte continues with his class on edges and power generation. As noted in Part 1 and Part 2 this class was in Korea on one of Chris’s visits and you’ll notice Eun Hee Lee translating for her Korean skaters. Please excuse the audio on this video as it was taken during the class with no wireless microphones so it can be difficult to hear. Nevertheless, the ideas demonstrated in the video are important and worth observing even without quality audio.

In this short video, Chris builds on the previous videos by turning around and doing the drills backwards. Notice extra focus here on keeping the back up as there’s a powerful tendency to bend forward at the waist for balance. He also briefly touches on the angles of the joints of the leg. Notice that again Chris has the skaters place their hands behind their backs as this helps most skaters feel when they are leaning forward. In the video you can see Chris work with a skater on proper hip position.

Notice the similarity of this drill to Nick Perna’s backward slalom drill for power generation.