Ice dancing is really my favorite discipline in skating and I'm so happy that we have really good social ice-dance sessions in Portland at the rink at the Lloyd Center. When I moved to Portland from Boston in 1993 I wasn't sure if there was any dance here and was thrilled to find out that dance was alive and well in Portland!
The dance sessions are Saturday evenings from 5:15-6:15 and Sunday morning from 10am -12 noon. Sunday mornings are generally better attended than Saturday evenings, but this morning's sessions were pretty sparse. Usually we have quite a few young people, mostly teenagers taking lessons and learning dance from the more experienced adult skaters, but there were just a few of them on the ice today. I wonder if that has something to do with spring break?
Anyway, it's a nice session and today was no exception - there were enough social ice-dancers to have people (well, men, in my case) to skate with and enough room for one of our adult teams to work on their compulsory dances and original dance for Adult Nationals (coming up very soon!) and another adult to work on an International Dance with not one, but TWO coaches!!
The ice was good despite some talk about there being something wrong with the zamboni (?).
Overall, no complaints - Ice Dance is alive and well in Portland, OR!!
Who'd a-thunk it 15 years ago when I moved here from Boston that there would be ice-dance out here in the great, wild northwest?
6 comments:
I've never thought of Portland as being particularly wild...
I'm surprised that dance is so popular at LC, I would have thought that would be difficult since it's not a full-size rink.
It does seem like dancers are more common at LC and Valley than the other two rinks.
The history of ice-dance at the Lloyd Center goes way, way back (also Valley used to have a popular dance session) and is the only rink that has scheduled a social session, at least in the 15 years I have lived here.
Yes it's small, but the ice-dancers in Portland have AMAZING lobing ability and can get most of the patterns in that small rink.
The downside is that you don't have to push - at all - and then filling your patterns in the larger rinks is harderm- hence the extra practice at Valley.
Gee, something was wrong with the Zam at Lloyd Center? Never..... :)
The Ladies Hookey Club has skated at Lloyd since the 60's. Prior to skating at Lloyd, they skated at another area rink since the 40's. Today, the Hookey Club also includes men. They ice dance and skate on Mon and Thurs mornings.
Sherwood Ice Arena (503 625 5757) is trying to rejuvenate ice dance. They have a session on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Leone Spalding is skating and teaching there now too!
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