Exhibition: Canasta Tango Demonstration

Last Sunday I demonstrated the Canasta Tango in an exhibition. My new coach, the one that's gonna choreograph a pre-bronze program for me, is very involved in the adult skating community. He coaches many adults, I think, mostly adults, including a group that does ice theater. Some of his students will go to the ISI nationals and they decided to do a dress rehearsal with their numbers. And they had extra ice time, so the coach asked me if I wanted to demonstrate a dance, since I don't have a program just yet.

I hesitated for just a second, because of old thoughts of not feeling confident that I have that much skating skills to show. I will have to add that I've never been in a show as a kid, the only shows I ever did were the adult group numbers at my rink. But I realized, because this exhibition was between adult skaters, it was a perfect opportunity to check the waters, to see how I feel now, and to work on building confidence.

I choose Canasta Tango because for now, it's my favorite dance from the first nine I know. I also like the Willow Waltz but it's a more difficult dance and I wanted no pressure. Let's see what pressure I'm talking about:
- I used to get very nervous at both the group number at my rink shows and the tests I took.
- It would be my first time on ice by myself. At the Ice Dancing tests I had the coach there as my partner, and at the MITF tests there were 3 of us sharing the ice.
- I just started with the new coach to work on arm movement and presenting. And we started from nothing, as I haven't taken dance as a kid. I could have kept it simple with just lifting the arms in a ballet position at the beginning and presenting at the end, but I challenged myself to do a little more. To add to the pressure, I choreographed that myself, because I didn't see my coach again before the exhibition. Tango asks for sharp movement, I worked at it at home, in the mirror, but didn't look right so I did more of a flamenco movement that is softer.
- I have no experience in skating on music on my own. I sometimes try to do the dances on music but as I work on correcting a million things, I usually lose the rhythm. The music was not a priority because I know at test I have my coach there to keep the rhythm.
- I decided to wear a dress that I made and I love it, but... I had a sample fabric that I couldn't buy anymore, and while I first meant it to became a skating dress, I decided to let it be a regular dress so I can wear it more often. For skating is mainly it is too long and not tight enough.

How did it go?
- I wasn't nervous but I wasn't at ease either. I felt a little award.
- The restart of the music gave me an adrenaline rush. The first version of the hand movement was more controlled, the second time I rushed, I didn't extend as much, maybe was more tango like? But hand movement needs work.
- I blame being ahead of the music on the adrenaline rush also... but I knew skating on music needed work. That's one of the reasons I want a program.
- I got distracted as I got cheers in the middle of my third pattern. I thought they expected me to finish after the second pattern. It seems though, that Ice Dancing etiquette is for the spectators to cheer when the skaters are closest to them, because there are no focal points like spins, jumps, spirals to cheer then.
- I love taking videos of me skating because I see clearly what needs to be improved.
- The pattern of the dance and edges weren't totally correct. I wasn't even trying because I didn't do this dance in  a while, I didn't have time to work at it and I didn't want to put pressure on myself...
- It didn't look polished and I didn't expect to. The thing that hit me was the lack of toe pointing. I'll definitely work on that... Then my posture... I work on it continuously but it seems I have to work harder.
- Commitment to the music and character and presenting... I think that would do wonders and I see two ways to work on this. Firstly my new coach asks me to present everything I do on ice. Like when I do MITF, a spin, a jump, to put them in a sequence. It's gonna take a while. I think it's gonna be easier when I'll have a program and I'll practice parts of it. Secondly, I'll have to do more shows, exhibitions, competitions...
- Now, surprisingly, I also felt a little proud of my skating, in the sense that I felt it improved, not that it was perfectly done. I had speed and quite deep edges compared with when I tested it more than a year ago . Below is the solo warm up for that test. You can see that here I don't go too deep into the center of the rink.