PART TWO OF TWO PARTS
By JOHN KEREZY, eyeoncleveland.com founder
Footwork, lifts, and spins are at the heart of ice dancing. There are times in the event where the two skaters are as one, spinning and moving like synchronized swimmers except on the ice.
But that’s where the similarity ends. Lifts, and the movement of the lifting and the lifted in the partnership, make up a large percentage of how judges score the event. They also elicit most of the “oohs” and “ahs” from the audience as the couple goes through choreographed changes in their positions during a lift.
“It’s hard work,” says Logan Bye, 25, of Colorado Springs, the senior member of the Eva Pate/Logan Bye Team USA Ice Dancer partnership. He and his teammate and fiancée, Eva Page, 23, of Cleveland, have been skating together for more than four years. They are on the rise with both Team USA and internationally, having won the Autumn Classic in Montreal in September and finishing 4th and 6th in their last two international events, in the Cup of China in Chongqing in November and Skate Canada in Vancouver, BC, in October. They have now completed their second Grand Prix season.
(For more background about Eva and Logan, see Part I which is linked here): https://eyeoncleveland.com/2023/12/01/clevelands-eva-pate-looking-forward-to-skating-much-closer-to-home-in-the-next-two-months/
“We’re on a pretty strict training schedule, working with various coaches to help us continuously improve different aspects of both our rhythm dance (RD) and free dance (FD) routines,” Eva adds. “We’re also coaching and teaching ourselves, and that makes for some pretty long days.”
The duo is in intense training now for the 2024 Prevagen U.S. Figure Skating Championships, which will be held Jan. 22-28 at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus. The ice dancing competition is scheduled for Thursday-Saturday, Jan. 25-27. (See link to full schedule below.)
Typically, Logan and Eva are on the road around 7:30 each morning driving to the Novi Ice Rink in Michigan located about 30 miles northwest of Detroit. There they’ll begin the day by coaching and teaching young skaters. After teaching, they’ll put in the first of two practice sessions for themselves. They’ll sandwich in lunch between the sessions. After the second session, they return to the ice for more teaching. Many days they won’t head home for dinner until 6 p.m. or later.
While many top-level Team USA ice skaters have financial means or sufficient support to focus 100 percent of their time on lessons and preparations for National and Internatioal competitions, Eva and Logan aren’t in that category. So they help pay for their coaches by coaching themselves, teaching young up-and-coming skaters at the Novi Ice Rink. This helps keep Eva and Logan’s time and attention focused at the rink.
Yet the duo always make time and find a way to give back to others, especially others in the ice skating community. Eva and Logan were featured skaters at beloved U.S. Olympian Scott Hamilton’s Cleveland Sk8 to Elimin8 Cancer,® event, which raised more than $30,000 — or 50% more than the goal of $20,000 — on December 7.
(Eva and Logan have established a GoFundMe page to help raise support for their goal of getting to the Winter Olympics. Here is that link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-usa-skaters-to-reach-the-winter-olympics)
WORKING WITH THE BEST COACHES
So, how do top ice dancers such as Eva Pate and Logan Bye make their lifts, spins and footwork perfect? It takes a lot of practice with top coaches to become excellent. They have a team of coaches — five regulars — who are assisting them.
“Igor Shpilband is our main coach, and like a terrific head coach on a sports team, he’s pretty much involved in everything,” Logan explains. “He’s been with me even before Eva and I became partners. He’s terrific with technique, but also with exercises and with general artistry too. He also knows when to have other coaches more involved with us and our routines.”
Pasquale Camerlengo is the duo’s choreography coach. “He’s really strong at the little nuances of our routines, which adds a lot to our program and also helps improve our scores,” explains Eva. “He tries to create purposeful movement with every nuance within the music.” She adds that Pasquale takes a ‘whole body’ approach to the choreographic, thinking about the direction in which she and Logan are moving throughout the entire routines.
Ice dancers’ scores are based in part on how well they execute twizzles and step sequences, as well as dance spins and lifts. For this part, Eva and Logan rely on Natalia Deller’s coaching advice and skills.
(Author’s Note: Want to judge for yourself? Here’ a link to the International Skating Union’s (ISU) Technical Panel handbook, which – among other things – explains scoring.)
“Natalia is very focused on the important skills and our approach,” Logan explains. “She preaches whole body alignment to us, or how we use our body rotation to accomplish whatever our goal is. The lines that we make, each edge, is kind of the same as where our bodies need to be. She helps us with that, and she’s great with the compulsory dances.”
In recent years, the ISU has modified the required elements within the rhythm dance portion of the competition. There is a requirement that “1980s music” with a tempo of 100 beats a minute be a part of the rhythm dance. It’s an effort to attract a greater and younger audience to follow ice dancing.
Another coach assisting Eva and Logan is Renee Petkovski. “Renee assisted us a lot with our ‘Riverdance’ sequences last year and has been instrumental to improvement our bodies’ movement,” Eva explains. “She assists us one-on-one with some private coaching lessons, and we also see her in a group ballet class too.”
Logan added that she’s also a good ‘clean up’ coach. “If our routine is getting a little messy and things aren’t coming together as well as they should, we’ll rely on her help to clean it up,” he says.
On occasion the ice dance duo also works with Adrienne Lenda, who also specializes in ice dance elements.
Eva and Logan always have two on ice practice sessions a day with their various coaches. “We’ll go 3 to 4 hours of training and practice with our coaches every day, Monday through Friday,” Logan says. “Other teams might do more, but we’re actually on the ice more than that, including our time coaching young skaters at Novi.”
At the 2024 Prevagen U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Eva and Logan’s Rhythm Dance music will be “My Prerogative” by Bobby Brown and “Walk This Way” by both Aerosmith and Run DMC. For the Free Dance segment, they will skate and dance to “Polovtsian Dances” from Prince Igor by Alex Borodin/Torgny Sportsen, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Jarvi, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra Choir, and Ove Gotting.
FOREIGN OR DOMESTIC, PREDICTIONS, AND SCHEDULE
As members of Team USA and competing on the Grand Prix circuit, Eva and Logan have a lot of experience skating in both U.S. and international events. Their first (and so far only) top finish has been in an international tournament, and they have also posted numerous “Top Five” placings in internationals. The have yet to crack into the Top Five at the U.S. Nationals though.
“Competing internationally is demanding, physically and mentally,” Logan says. “We’ve found that the stress level and the anxiety are a lot less than when we skate domestically, so that’s to the good.”
“Judging in the U.S. seems to be a bit more unpredictable,” adds Eva. “We seem to have less of a feel for the judges, but we are optimistic that this will change later this month in Columbus at the U.S. Championships.”
When asked whom they think the favorite ice-dance duos will be at U.S. Championships, Eva and Logan were pretty quick to provide some predictions.
“Assuming no major mistakes (2023 World Champion and two consecutive time defending U.S. Champion) Madison Chock and Evan Bates have to be the favorite duo,” Logan says.
“Kaitlyn Hawayek & Jean-Luc Baker are a very strong duo and should place quite high,” Eva adds. “After that, we think Caroline Green & Michael Parsons and Christina Carreira & Anthony Ponomarenko will also be among the top placers.”
Eva and Logan are aiming for a finish among the top five themselves in the U.S. Championships. Their previous highest finish in this event was seventh place.
The Rhythm Dance session at U.S. Championships at Nationwide Arena in Columbus will be from 4:30 to 6:50 p.m. on Thursday, January 25. The Free Dance session is scheduled from 1:50 p.m. to 4:20 p.m. on Saturday, January 27.
More than 180 skaters are entered in the 2024 Prevagen U.S. Championships. Here is a link to the event, along with information about tickets and events in Columbus during the event.
https://www.usfigureskating.org/event/2024-prevagen-us-figure-skating-championships
You can view or download the entire schedule here:
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