In early August, Pippa Towler-Green, Candice Towler-Green, and Daniel Linden hosted a solo ice dance camp in South London. The event was split over a weekend with novice, junior, and senior skaters attending on Saturday and adult skaters attending on Sunday. Over sixty skaters took part over the weekend.
Candice and Pippa grew up at the Streatham rink after their mother—four-time World Champion Diane Towler-Green—moved to the area to begin her coaching career in 1969. Both daughters competed in ice dance and eventually became coaches themselves. Candice is also an ISU technical specialist and is on the Solo Dance Working Group. (I spoke with her previously, which you can read here.)
Before transitioning into on-ice cinematography—creating The Ice Capture, and coaching, Linden was an ice dancer. He initially trained under Phillip Poole, who was then skating with Pippa, before moving to Streatham to train under the three Towler-Green coaches and skate with Jessica Marjot (the two-time British National Champion in solo dance). In addition to coaching over the weekend, Linden combined both passions and recorded videos of the camp to put together a trailer to help promote future camps. He described it as “a challenge but very enjoyable.”
In the 2023/24 season, the ISU introduced Solo Ice Dance internationally with two competitions: Helsinki Solo Ice Dance International and Washington Picken Solo Ice Dance International. This season, five competitions are on the calendar to be hosted in Great Britain, Poland, the United States, the Netherlands, and Finland.
Creating the camp was a joint effort from all three coaches. “[It] was something we’ve always wanted to do in Streatham,” Pippa said.
“The interest in solo dance in the last few years has grown immensely. We have always had a passion for solo dancing in our team [so] we thought ‘why not?’”
The day began with the hosts talking to skaters and parents, highlighting Carolina Kostner’s Olympic program to Ne me quitte pas. “I chose Carolina as I think she is one of the few people that changed the way that skaters move. She is someone I admire and I’ve seen her skate live many times. Her skating is so beautiful and there are not many skaters that can skate/move like her from any discipline – from dance, to pairs, to singles,” Pippa said.
Skaters were then split into two groups for the first part of the day. One group would spend an hour doing stretching & fitness with Gillian Slatter off-ice. Slatter took the groups through various exercises, making them warm up again to emphasise the importance of stretching and looking after their bodies.
On-ice, Pippa, Candice, and Daniel began with skating exercises and stroking movements. Assisting in demonstrating these elements were two Streatham skaters, Jessica Marjot and Abby Peacock, as well as the 2024 Junior Solo Dance British Champion Lily Bakhtiari, and Elena Whalley, who all led the groups.
After the two groups had all spent time doing both activities, there was a short break before everyone got on the ice. Pippa led one group and guided them with their edge elements. In solo dance, edge elements replace the lift and there are four options: spiral, crouch, spread eagle, and ina bauer. On the other side of the rink, Candice guided skaters with how they could improve their twizzle positions and levels.
After this hour was another break for the skaters as British junior ice dancers Ashlie Slatter & Atl Ongay-Perez (both of whom started in solo dance) performed their new free dance for the first time. The 2024 Winter Youth Olympics bronze medalists also participated in the final three topics of the day, Body movement – where skaters went from end to end of the rink utilising all parts of their body and working on extension in the body, a section on Improv – where all skaters mixed together to create mini routines, and Coordination – a bit of fun where in groups, they skated in a circle whilst holding a cup of water – the challenge being to not spill any. (Only a couple did!)
As solo dance continues to grow in popularity, especially in the international sphere thanks to the ISU adopting the discipline, camps and seminars like these are important to not only display the current skill of skaters but also nurture the talent of the next generations.
Since the camp in Streatham, Pippa and Candice were invited to the IceLab in Bergamo, Italy, to introduce the rules and regulations of solo dance which has just been introduced domestically. “The love from their solo dancers is unbelievable already!”
The trio hope to create more camps in the future. “The next step is figuring out a name!”
