25% Complete

Yeah, that's about as much of the choreography as we were able to get done for our lesson. It felt like way more than that but, when I got home and ran it all with the music on the floor, I realized that we actually didn't get as far as I thought. Part of this is my inability to pick up choreography quickly (because I'm still a noob!). I will say that what we have so far is super pretty and I'm really lucky to have a coach who is also trained in dance because it shows. It flows yet it's strong like the music. I'm super excited!

First of all, I was really distracted during our lesson because I was sharing the ice with a senior level skater from China and his coach (both of whom I've seen on TV but I can't tell you their names or which competitions I've seen the skater perform in). I just wanted to watch but there was work to be done.

Lessonz: It was all about the choreography, of course! We spent some time talking about which jumps might be included and so far we have:

• Loop-Loop combo
• Single Salchow
• Waltz-Falling Leaf-Half Flip Sequence
• Single Toe Loop 
• Stag Jump and Ballet Jump (these are not counted as official jumps)

For spins, we decided on a sit spin for sure (gotta get that up to snuff) and either a scratch spin or attitude. We spent some time getting the opening to the program sorted out. He spaced things out more so that my opening jump sequence is a little later than I originally thought it would be. He also changed the spiral sequence to just one RFO spiral for timing. In addition, looks like I'll be doing the salchow right after the spiral so, if I remember this correctly, I should be doing the RFO spiral to the lutz corner, swing roll and mohawk into the salchow. This is the same transition that was from the pre-bronze crossover moves in the field but adding a salchow to it is tricky. I've actually only ever done a salchow from an LFO three turn so when I tried it from a mohawk later in the practice, I couldn't do it. Needless to say, that's going to be something that I'll be spending time practicing on Tuesday. There were many other bits of choreography that he showed me that looked lovely when he did it but I just couldn't make it work when I tried. This is going to be a tough program but if I can work on some of these things and get them right, it's going to kick ass :)