Edge Class – Part 5 (Chris Conte)

Choreographer Chris Conte continues with his class on edges and power generation. As noted in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 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 video, Chris explains that he takes away a skater’s arms for many drills in an effort to keep the skater focused on good posture and overall alignment while staying relaxed. (His comment about “upper Peanut” and “lower Peanut” was an inside joke as we nicknamed the skater “Peanut”earlier – all in good fun.) Chris also discusses knee rhythm and relaxed arm movements. Much like power pulls, Chris wants the skaters to generate power from the edges without any actual “pushes.” After discussing posture and ankle/knee bend with the class, Chris does some funny parody crossovers with little ankle bend, demonstrating that without ankle bend, the skater must bend forward from the waist. He then shows what it should really look like.