Skating the Dancer's Way

For "Evening with Champions" participant Katherine Healy, ice skating is only her second love. Her first love is ballet dancing.

Healy has performed in many prestigious roles including Clara in the New York City Ballet's "The Nutcracker Suite," and Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet." Healy, a Princeton undergraduate, also began dancing as the principal dancer in London Festival Ballet at only age 15. There is strong connection between dancing and ice skating, Healy says.

"I have kept up my skating because I felt it helped my dancing. You always hear people tooting about how dance or ballet helps skating, but in a very physical way skating helps dance. An arena is so much bigger than the stage. It gives you a great sense of expansion. Then when you go back to the stage you have an enormous amount of control over the space," Healy says.

She adds, "Skates are really heavy and so it's like training with weights. Then when I start to dance I find that I have all this reserve strength."

Healy says that she likes skating because when she skates she accomplishes things in motion that she can only accomplish while standing still in dance.

"When you're on the floor you do an Arabesque standing in one spot, but while you're on the ice you can do the same thing and be moving," Healy says. "I think that's what most dancers like best about skating, the fact that you can hold a pose and still be moving at the same time."

Healy says she looks forward to doing the show because she will get another chance to perform with some of the skaters she admires. Healy has never appeared in "An Evening With Champions" before, but she has worked with most of the skaters in this year's show in another skating show, "Super Skates" which usually takes place right before this Jimmy Fund benefit.

"I'm very impressed with all the other skaters in the show. Competitive skating is a tough field, and I'm impressed with people who stick it out," Healy says.

According to Healy, skating in the presence of the greats doesn't make her nervous; it just makes her more hyped for the show. "It makes me want to do well. When I do a show like this my adrenaline always goes up," she says.