Skating

“ CHAPTER V. SKATING AS A FINE ART.
Of all the plays that are played by this playful world on its play-days, there is no play like Skating.
To prepare a board for the moves of this game of games, a panel for the drawings of this Fine Art, a stage for the entrechats and pirouettes of its graceful adepts, Zero, magical artificer, had been, for the last two nights, sliding at full speed up and down the North River. ”

“ Skating is a delightful and invigorating exercise. It calls into play a great variety of muscles, and is admirably adapted for almost all ages. It strengthens the ankles and helps give an easy and graceful carriage to the body. Skating is especially valuable, as it can be enjoyed when other out-door exercises are not convenient.
Every child above ten years of age should be taught to swim. The art, once mastered, is never forgotten. It calls into use a wide combination of muscles. ”

“ Some of the skaters eventually went back to practicing in locations of their own choosing. . .places that were either not suited to the vendors purposes or for other reasons not generally used.
They would skate in the moonlight at night, or bring candles to set on the ice, and would skate around them like faeries in the forest.
All in all, it was some of the most beautiful skating of all time— and anyone today would undoubtedly consider themselves blessed if a chance to see anything like it came along. ”

“ The mere presence of an assisting hand will often aid the ambitious skater in the first mastery of a difficult balance or the sustaining of a long spiral. Individual skating, when it is highly perfected, tends somewhat toward an over-abundance of dance steps and toe movements, while pair skating remains skating at its best—the long, sweeping, exquisitely poised curves carried over two hundred feet of glistening ice. ”

“ Skating is a sport for everybody—girls and boys, young people and old people. It can be started in extreme childhood and enjoyed far into old age. It can be a fast, strenuous exercise or a gentle enjoyment of poetic motion. It stimulates health, prompts to wholesome life out of doors, is a social diversion and, in its best development, requires considerable mental application. In every respect it is an ideal sport for people of any nation, especially those situated where natural ice is found or artificial ice is provided. ”

“ In fact, I had not been on the ice fifteen minutes, when I got to skating too fast—my skate going so fast that I couldn’t keep up—and the result was that I presently had the ice for a pillow, and lay there gazing at the clouds, with only one overhanging skate-clad foot to interrupt the view. Then, before I had time to stir from this novel position, a handsome young lady, who was trying the backward skating, endeavored to skate over me—a feat frequently attempted without success—and the result was, she violently took a seat upon my stomach and jobbed one of her elbows in my eye. ”

“ While cabs must crawl and ’busses must creep,
All long to say, from Fleet to Chepe,
“O, good-bye to the Bar and its moaning!”
Punch, September 26, 1874.
The Three Skaters.
Three ladies went skating at Prince’s one day,
And happy indeed were one and all;
For their hearts were light, and their dresses were gay,
But ’ere night they each had a terrible fall;
For women will skate, whate’er be their fate,
And its perfectly useless objections to state,
So heigh ho! for the rink and the skating. ”

“ The tracing of certain set figures on the ice is by no means all there is to figure skating. The correct carriage of the head and body, the arms and the balance leg are not merely an important part of the sport; they are even the very basis on which good marks are given in all serious competitions. No skater wishes to look like a freak on the ice. To avoid it one must cultivate the right carriage and balance from the start. ”

“ Skating was done for, for the ice on the lake had become overloaded, and had broken up into a shifting mass of blocks, grinding against each other when the wind blew, and threatening the safety of any craft that tried to put out in it. ”

“ These are the foundation of all figure skating. After they have been fully mastered the skater will probably discover a tendency to adopt an individual style and make up special figures suited to individual physical or temperamental characteristics. One skater, for instance, will especially enjoy spins and whirls; another will incline toward big, showy spirals; another will develop individual skill in two-foot movements such as grapevines, etc. Skating, like every other fine sport, becomes an expression of individuality. ”

“ While the skating of school figures is always to place, and the marking of that skating is dependent upon the ability of the skater to make his tracings upon the ice conform to correct designs, the free skating is, as its name implies, entirely independent of conventional form and may be located at any place upon the ice. The free skating programme is the most interesting portion of the contest generally and offers the best test of the skater’s ability to illustrate mastery of the spectacular side of the sport. ”

“ Spectacular jumps and spins, pirouettes and acrobatic development of skating strokes are the most taking features of any skating programme offered to the general public. For this reason, the skater who is ambitious to become an exhibition skater must perfect himself or herself in these movements which are somewhat outside of the strict school figures but which nevertheless are most important additions to general figure skating. ”

“ But the consideration of combined skating, which is the cream and quintessence of English skating, must be considered last; at present we will see what the single skater may be called upon to do, if he wishes to attain to acknowledged excellence in his sport. ”

“ The plunge is the main thing in learning to skate backward. Make up your mind some fine morning that you are going to practise outside edges backward or inside edges backward all of the skating session of that day. Then do it. Skating is a matter of will power after all and not at all a matter of strength. I took up skating just because I was not strong and the doctors said it was outdoor life or a little narrow box for me. ”

“ On skates thus fastened anything may be accomplished.
Always put your own skates on, and put them on deliberately; for if you really mean skating in earnest, limbs, and even life, may depend on their running true, and not failing at a critical moment. The slope of the bank must be descended sideways—avoid [Pg 23] the stones concealed by snow, for they will destroy the edge of the skate. When within a foot or so, leap on, and the impetus will carry you some yards out upon the lake, clear of the shadow of the bank and the willows above, out to where the ice gleams under the sunshine. ”

“ The technology of skating is imperfect. Few of the great feats, the Big Things, have admitted names. If I attempted to catalogue Wade’s achievements, this chapter might become an unintelligible rhapsody. A sheet of paper and a pen-point cannot supply the place of a sheet of ice and a skate-edge. Geometry must have its diagrams, Anatomy its corpus to carve. Skating also refuses to be spiritualized into a Science; it remains an Art, and cannot be expressed in a formula. ”

“ Already this style has taken the place in the annual championship of English skating, and without doubt it will grow both in the number of its practitioners, and in the force and speed of their movements. It is scientifically based, being evolved from the charming movements that are possible to hand-in-hand skaters when going free on the ice, and not bound to consider their opposing partner, or to arrive in a given manner at a given point. ”

“ Skating is one of the finest gymnastic exercises, by which man, as Klopstock says, “like the Homeric gods, strides with winged feet over the sea transmuted into solid ground.” It is one of the healthiest exercises, bringing the body into action by a great variety of motions. The art is mentioned in the Edda, written eight hundred years ago, in which the god Uller is represented as distinguished by beauty, arrows, and skates. ”

“ No sport so perfectly throws into relief command of the body as does skating. Watch a group of competitors for honours at any gathering of amateur women skaters and note how few have command of themselves—know absolutely what they want to do, and then are able to do it. One skater, in the language of the ice, can do the actual work, but has no form. It may be she lacks temperament, has no abandon, no rhythm; is stiff, or, while full of life, has bad arms. It is as necessary that the fancy skater should learn the correct position of the arms as that the solo dancer should. ”

“ That skating has actually become fashionable among the gentler sex we regard as the strongest indication of an awakening national taste for exercise. But there is need of caution. Most persons skate with too heavy clothes. The quick movements of the limbs in the changing evolutions of this pastime—though the practised skater is unconscious of much muscular effort—quicken the circulation enough to increase palpably the animal heat and produce a very sensible perspiration. ”

“ The place is lighted by gas, and men and women, old and young, with a plentiful sprinkling of children, on skates, are practicing all sorts of gyrations. The ladies are prettily and appropriately dressed in skating costumes, and some of them are proficient in the art of skating. The spectators sit or stand on a raised ledge around the ice parallelogram, while the skaters dart off, singly or in pairs, executing quadrilles, waltzes, curves, straight lines, letters, labyrinths, and every conceivable figure. ”

“ Nevertheless, on the scratched and
torn ice-surface skating is still quite possible; on the smooth
plate glass we know we could not skate.
Some little time after this discussion, the connection between
skating and a somewhat abstruse fact in physical science occurred
to me. As the fact itself is one which has played a part in the
geological history of the earth,
[1] A lecture delivered before the Royal Dublin Society in 1905.
260
and a part of no little importance, the subject of skating,
whereby it is perhaps best brought home to every one, is
deserving of our careful attention. ”

“ The arrangement is such that no free skating programme, however perfect or spectacular, can win for the skater more than two-thirds of the marks obtainable for perfect execution of the school figures. In other words, mere showiness of skating cannot win over superior performance of foundation elements. ”

“ I pretended (it seemed safe) to be desperately fond of hunting, and to despise skating. Besides I had work, literary work, I told CECILIA, an article on Miss AUSTEN. This pleased her, but nobody accepted the article. In fact, I was bent on secretly learning to skate. I sent to town for a pair of "Acmes," for I knew I never could manage all the straps and buckles of the ordinary modern skate. I knew of a pond where nobody came, and thither, under cover of night, I smuggled a bed-room chair. ”

“ Skating exhilarates the spirits, improves the figure, and makes a girl balance and carry herself well; it is a most becoming exercise for her, and is much in every way to be commended. Moreover, skating gives a girl courage and self-reliance. Dancing, followed as a rational amusement, causes a free circulation of the blood, and, provided it does not induce her to sit up late at night, is most beneficial. ”

“ This is commonly reckoned the first step to figure skating, as, when it is once effected, the rest follows with ease. The impulse is gained in the same manner as for the ordinary run; but, to get on the outside edge of the right foot, the moment that foot is in motion, the skater must advance the left shoulder, throw the right arm back, look over the right shoulder, and incline the whole person boldly and decisively on that side, keeping the left foot suspended behind. ”

“ He noted mentally, now, that he would telephone Myrtle in the morning and have her come over for the afternoon. Skating alone is all very well for exercise, but not much in the way of pleasure, he considered. [Pg 77] His skates, dangling from a strap over his shoulder, clinked, musically, as he picked his way with exceeding caution along the icy pavement. ”

“ People darted suddenly into the picture, materialising in full detail in the space of a moment, then rushed out of it again, dwindling into insignificant black dots which merged themselves into the continuously shifting throng beyond.
At last she bent her steps towards the lower end of the rink, by common consent reserved for beginners in the art of skating. She had not skated for several years, owing to a severe strain which had left her with a weak ankle, and she felt somewhat nervous about starting again.
Rather slowly she fastened on her skates and ventured tentatively on to the ice. ”

“ Now skating, in both these styles, is largely a matter of form, and herein it differs from nearly every other sport. It does not suffice in skating, whether you are English or Internationalist, to do certain things, to cut threes, to execute rocking-turns, or loops or back-brackets. ”

“ We have the dash and the chic with skates which Frenchmen show with the etching-needle, and the Canadian, on the other hand, is apt to decline into the mere prettiness which is the fault of English etchers.
Skating has been, within the last few years, a very progressive art. There was a time when mere speed, and the grace of speed, satisfied most amateurs. ”

“ In the British style of figure skating, which is not recognized by the International Skating Union, the body is held as nearly as possible upright, the employed leg is kept straight, the unemployed leg carried behind, the arms hang loosely at the sides, and the head is turned in the direction of progress. ”