Ice skating in Puerto Rico

Last night I had to take a break from the grim news coming out of Egypt. One of my Smith students has been spending some time in Egypt this year. I hope and pray that she was only there for the fall term. I spoke with a colleague at Smith yesterday asking her to check up on my former student to make sure that she is home and safe.

Last night, to get a reprieve from the bad news, I watched the US Women's Figure Skating Competition. Again I am struck with the similarity of performing as a figure skater and performing as a singer. I have not been on ice skates since I was in high school. And I was no figure skater! A few of us would go to McCamley Park in Battle Creek and stagger around the frozen pond. Since it was only about two feet deep, there was no fear of falling through the ice. None of us tried to be Sonja Henie, who was the great skater of the day.

In both singing and skating there are a few common points to observe if you want to achieve success. First of all, you must make your technique a second nature, so that when you perform you can forget thinking about the technique and just go for it. 

Last night I especially enjoyed Scott Hamilton's quiet comments while the young women were on the ice. I don't know if he teaches, but he would be a great teacher. He would exult when they pulled off a difficult triple something or other, and be sad for them when they fell on their butt.

It's the way I feel when listening to one of my students perform, especially when I am not at the piano with them. It's not too big a secret that the pianist has a lot to do with what happens with any singer or instrumentalist, in spite of the fact that in newspaper reviews we are generally given one line indicating that we were there!


One young woman, who won first place last night, skated above the ice. She floated through a complicated program and made it look easy. A fine singer does the same thing. Both need to so completely absorb the technical aspects of their art that one doesn't watch or listen to technique, the listener simply smiles in amazement at how simple and inevitable everything looks. Clarity, ease, precision, perfection.


Several of the skaters were all about the technique and seemed to be hitting the viewer over the head with how difficult everything was. It made me tired to watch them. They looked clumsy and uncomfortable on the ice. You knew ahead of time when they were going to take a fall.


I have seen the same thing happen with singers who try so hard to sing that it becomes a burden. I find that at any level a wise singer should make singing look easy.


'Art is the emotion played on the technique'. This motto can work for both singers and skaters. Both face the same fear of falling on their butts, literally or figuratively.


So singers should watch the really great figure skaters as well as the really great singers to see how it can be done. Then absorb your technique and 'just sing the damned song!!'