The Rio Diaries – January 2009
February 2009 -Leaving the UK in winter is part of my work schedule, at least for a few weeks. Having been born and brought up in the tropics, I cannot take an entire winter without some heat and relaxation, and luckily, the seasonal drop in skate work allows me to do this almost every year. However, it is something I am eternally grateful for as it saves my sanity and allows me to recharge. Brazil is a special place for me as I lived there for a year when I was 18 and I have tried to return as often as possible. A few years ago I bought some land in the north of Brazil….instead of a pension.
This year however was different. I was in Rio particularly to have some skate lessons of my own, and fu
lfil my belief that every teacher needs to continue learning if they are going to remain vital in their field. I have been in contact with ICP (Instructor Certification Programme) instructor Erika Cordeiro who is based in Rio, for several years and whenever I am there we meet up and skate (and talk skating).
I have always enjoyed travelling and meeting other full-time skate instructors and have had the good fortune to do so in many countries (Australia, Spain, Slovenia). There aren’t many of us around and it always fascinates me how although we are all trained by ICP and come from the same root, we all have different markets, different environments to skate in, different laws restricting us etc. I always learn a lot from these encounters and find it inspiring to see what my counterparts in other countries are achieving for the sport of inline skating.
You can find out all about Erika’s Rio skate school here in an interview I did with her. Erika will also be coming to London in June 2009 for a weekend of skate dance workshops, details to follow.
We planned a series of private lessons for the duration of my stay in Rio, taking place either indoors in a dance studio (with smooth wood floor and mirrors), outside in a public skate rink or in the covered/relaxation area of an apartment building. From where I was staying in Ipanema with a good friend of mine, the ‘commute’ to have my lessons was idyllic, involving a skate along Ipanema beach (they have resurfaced the cycle paths since last year and they are now super smooth perfection), then cutting through the shady one-way 
streets of Ipenema and Leblon to get to the Lagoon (7.5km all the way around of smooth cycle path).
In Rio you are surrounded by water, mountains and sun. It’s a spectacular urban environment, dramatic and extreme in every way yet possessing that unique chilled atmosphere that Brazil does so well.
Your choice of thirst quenchers is also mind blowing. For the sporty (health conscious) people the favourite is of course coconut water, straight from the coconut, the top chopped off with a machete in front of you and a straw plopped in…..rehydrates you instantly. Then there are the umpteen varieties of fresh fruit juices, all made to order and blitzed in a blender as you wait. There are so many Brazilian fruits which we simply don’t know about (eg, umbu, cupuacu, caja, acerola, acai…..and so it goes on). It is the hardest thing to be done in a day in Rio, decide which is your next flavour.
My first lesson. I was nervous. I was surprised I was nervous. I know Erika well, she’s a friend but I was nervous of making a fool of myself, of being crap, of not being able to do what she wanted me to do, of not liking it. I have dabbled in skate dance (or rather danced on skates whenever the opportunity arose, mainly at Notting Hill Carnaval), but never been serious about it. I had watched Erika’s videos and knew that this was another level of dancing, involving a lot of coordination of arms, legs and skates. The first lesson was in the dance studio and the first thing I thought was that there wasn’t enough room for both of us to skate around in. Erika told me she does skate classes in that room with 20 people….so shattering my own limitations about minimum area needed for classes.
The warm up began to pumping loud music and involved stretching all the major muscle groups, but often in a dancy way with movements, getting me into the rhythms. It seems Erika’s body is unable to stay completely still, her enthusiasm is very contagious and I was smiling and laughing a lot. The warm up quickly showed me that my body is totally unresponsive to particular movements and positions. Trying to isolate the movement of my waist, chest or shoulders for example in 4 different directions, produced a hilarious awakening to my body’s limitations. Having practiced yoga for many years I am aware of certain areas which are flexible and others which are not, but this was a new level of awareness to this phenomenon. As I tell my clients, our bodies are like Ferraris, amazing devices, but we tend to leave them parked in the garage or if we drive them we do so at the same speed and in the same lane and on the same roads. I was discovering that my Ferrari (although rarely parked in the garage) was in fact not used to this particular route and speed of acceleration. Only practice will change any of this. Asking your body gently to comply with your wishes and giving it some repetition in order to get familiar with the unfamiliar is what it’s all about. Doing this without complaining to your body that it’s crap, that’s the tricky part.
Erika then did a quick run-through of the basic moves and was happy that I knew a lot of them already, and if I didn’t then I picked them up quickly. However she noted that my upper body (from the butt upwards) was not contributing to the style of the skating and it was ‘all about the feet’ with me. As soon as I tried to get my hips and arms and shoulders to do what hers were doing I was faced with huge insecurities and a feeling that I must obviously look ridiculous doing this. Erika asked me if I thought she looked ridiculous doing it and of course she didn’t, she looked amazing. I realised the only way to get through my apprehensions was to try harder and not watch myself in the mirror but to watch her. This helped – until she told me it was obvious I wasn’t watching myself in the mirror and that we were paying for a dance studio exactly so that I could see myself and improve what was to be seen. Watching myself skate is not something I have had enough exposure to. The odd video here and there but not enough to feel really comfortable with myself (like listening to your own taped voice). I decided to trust her and threw myself into really observing myself and I suddenly saw the difference between my body and hers in various positions or moves. Usually my feet were spot on, she was right, my upper body wasn’t helping. Once I committed to getting this bit right, my inhibitions started to disappear as I improved.
http://skatefresh.pintofkittens.com/TravellingNYS_320x240.flvThis video is from the first day of class and it shows my apprehension in the upper body.
I wanted to retain all the information I was learning and the only method I know is to write it all down. By the end of the first 2 hour lesson I had managed to compress my note taking to become an almost illegible scrawl of shortened and abbreviated words. With each position often being a combination of legs, arms, head and shoulders and hips doing different things with each beat, it often got more complicated to write it down than to do it. Erika made some videos as we practiced so that I had video to 
accompany the notes in the future. Here are a couple of videos of me getting it wrong and then putting it right in the end.
I have to confess to a delightful feeling of accomplishment when I finally learned a routine and pulled it off. I was amazed at how long it could take to learn even a simple and short routine (and yet Erika told me she was amazed at how quickly I picked all of them up). She told me that what took me 20 – 30 mins to learn would take a normal class of intermediates 3- 5weeks to learn. I know I have the ability to learn fast and to make my skates do what I want but it still felt like a long process to me with numerous cock-ups here I felt my brain was frying. This showed me my tendency for perfection and being quite harsh with myself, something I am always asking my clients not to do as I tell them it doesn’t help their learning to have them beating themselves up in the process. Perhaps this is just a human trait, but is it a quest for perfection or the shadow side of hidden low self-esteem? I like how learning produces these questions and issues within all of us. Is that part of our addiction to learning and improving?
I learned a lot about how I learn. I have always known I am a ‘copier’, a combination of a watcher and a doer. I learned much faster when Erika was positioned slightly in front of me, rather than watch her or I in the mirror. Having someone mirror me also doesn’t work so well as me copying from behind. I was often stunned how my brain seemed not to know what was going on (and I would be convinced that the next moment I didn’t know what the next step was) and yet when that moment arrived the next step was simply there and my skates were doing it. When I watch the videos I have a strange feeling of conflict as in real life I felt like I was flailing behind and not knowing what was happening but the videos do not show that. I look alright, even if I say so myself. This difference of feeling and being is also something that comes across in watching videos. It can of course come out the other way round too, we think we are doing it perfectly and then we watch a video of ourselves and discover the not so pleasant truth……Knowing what we look like and having a congruous iner and outer image is something I am still aiming for in my dancing.
As the lessons continued we focussed on making the routines longer and looking at music tempos and how to combine different routines together, by adding ‘chunks’ of choreography which I call ‘bricks of 8′. Bricks because you build a whole routine with them and 8 because most music scores are timed in beats of 8. For moments I was reminded of my youth as a figure skater and some basic dance training I received which concluded that I ‘wasn’t very musical or expressive’, one of the reasons perhaps I never made it further in the world of competitive figure skating than I did. I know at that age I was painfully shy of anything ‘expressive’ and preferred to concentrate on landing the double axels and triple toe-loops rather than make my arms look all floaty. My tendency to focus on technique has continued my whole life in all my endevours and this new discovery of dance skating now is perhaps redressing that balance and showing me that the difference between my dance skating and Erika’s isn’t technique at all, it’s style.
http://skatefresh.pintofkittens.com/WristthrowX3_320x240.flvOnce a routine was ‘done’, ie the feet and basic movements were down, Erika would focus on the style. This involved paying minute attention to the position of a hip (usually sticking out somewhere), a shoulder (usually side on, not front on), position of hands and fingers….this minutiae was actually what made things looked choreographed, rather than messy. This surprised me, the influence of the non-technical aspects. She showed me videos of her students doing the routines and I could see that some of them didn’t have the complete steps and were doing easier versions of them (side stepping instead of crossing the feet over for example) and yet this didn’t detract for the whole spectacle as much as someone who had the feet right but their head was always going the wrong way or their arms were uncoordinated.
Erika used a lot of auditary techniques to help me learn. Without music she would do a series of steps (sounding more like tap dancing) and then she would get me to reproduce her steps with the same timing and tempo in sound. This really helped to focus the movements and get the timing absolutely right. I imagine what that will sound like with 20 people reproducing the stomping….
By the end of the week I had a stack of notes and videos for the future and a new found love for skating. I do so admire how this sport continues to keep me captivated, whether I am teaching or learning myself. I can see my progress from the first few days to the end. I can see that I learned the whole routine Erika performed with a big group if skaters at the 2008 PanAmerican games (like South American Olympics) in less than 2 hours, something she said took months in reality and which I also didn’t think I would ever remember while I was in the process with it. I can’t show you the final version as this is the routine that Erika will be teaching in her workshop in June.
What I find interesting about the dance skating is that all of the building blocks for dancing are highly useful for all other skate styles. It promotes coordination, bending of knees, thinking ahead, paying attention to edges,controlling speed, especially difficult to stay on the spot when needed etc. Several dynamic exercises which Erika gave me to repeat for a particular dance step I found myself thinking ‘that would be a useful drill for teaching crossovers’. In this way, working closely with another instructor is very fulfilling. I also
encourage any skater reading this to try some skate dace and of course to come to Erika’s workshop. Not only will you learn how to dance but the rest of your skating will benefit.
I am now looking forward to practicing and integrating my own dance and developing a teaching syllabus for the dance course which Skatefresh will run this summer. I highly recommend it for anyone who is having trouble with edges, knee bending and upper body rotation (too much or too little). I also recommend it for anyone who has got bored with their skating, feels like they haven’t learned anything for ages or feels that they can’t do dance skating. And I have the experience close enough to me that I can empathise with the miraid of emotions this will undoubtably bring out in some people.
Not all my skating time was spent having classes and dancing. Every Sunday in Rio 1400 roads are closed to traffic to allow urban areas to decongest, to promote alternative forms of transport (mainly bikes, walking an
d skating). Erika’s husband works for the local Rio council as an alternative transport representative, trying to bring an awareness that cities like Rio cannot cope with more cars and traffic. So along every major beach front road (Ipanema, Copacabana, Flamengo) all 4 lanes of traffic are closed all day and people rule the tarmac. Rio is a very body conscious place (with bikinis that small you can see why) and people take their exercise very seriously, either walking or running regularly. Ipanema and Copacabana are always quite busy with pedestrians on Sundays (but still nothing like Serp Rd in summer). It made for the perfect human slalom skate. Flamego beach was something else…..4 lanes of empty roads, perfect tarmac and the most incredible view of sugar loaf mountain throughout.
Rio is just visually spectacular. Nowhere else I have skated comes close. The only surprise is how few skaters there seem to be everywhere. I always compare everywhere to London and I guess there we are all cramped into one space (Hyde Park), whereas in Rio there are so many places to choose from.
We skated from Ipenema, past Copacabana, through the 
tunnel to Flamengo and then past Sugar Loaf to the Modern Art Museum (more lovely surfaces). We continued on until we reached the small domestic airport and waited for a plane to land before turning around and going home.
It’s always interesting to note the different obstacles in different skate locations which you need to keep an eye out for. Rio has many large tunnels cutting through the mountains and surprisingly they have pavements too. ‘Mind the door’ was all I heard from Erika as we entered the first tunnel and I was annoyed by her severely reduced speed in front of me. What door? I thought. ‘Que porta’? I asked, thinking I had misheard her. And then, right on queue, about 20m ahead, partly obscured because of the darkness I saw a door open outwards onto our pavement and someone walk out. These are homeless people who live in the tunnels’ electricity system. Last month a skater broke both arms by skating into such a door. Local knowledge is invaluable.
My biggest problem was not wanting to take my eyes off the views in order to check the surfaces in front of me. 
Luckily most of the tarmac is very new and in fantastic shape, but I did hit the odd twig and stone due to my eyes being distracted elsewhere. Talking of this problem, a male skater friend of Erika’s who joined us one afternoon said his problem wasn’t watching the view, it was watching hot girls walking by (of which there are too many to be true). He said he learned his lesson when he skated into a curb while watching a hot girl and then fell right at her feet in a heap. ‘Not cool’ was his modest response.
My intention is to go to Rio every January and I want to invite London’s skaters to join me. I cannot recommend this city enough and even a week here in winter can reset your barometre and steer you into bliss. I am planning 4 days of skating in Rio so as to allow people time to relax as well. Dance classes with Erika can also be included. Going to Rio is my gift to myself every year and one which I would love to share with anyone who wants to join me in January 2010…… I hope I’ve wetted your appetites.
Asha Kirkby
Skatefresh Manager
