lengo; 2010 World ice dance bronze medalist Massimo Scali; five-time U.S. ice dance champion Elizabeth (Punsalan) Swallow; and former So- viet competitor Natalia Annenko- Deller — to plan out the 2012‒13 season.
Te overriding question: re-
main in the junior ranks, or step up to seniors? Te consensus was to keep honing their skating as juniors but again, Eaton had to be con- vinced. “We talked about the different
options,” he said. “I went in with my mind set on [competing] senior, but I think, already at this point in the season, I’m glad we decided to stay junior. If we were to go senior I feel like we would burn ourselves out trying to hunt for the [U. S.] title so soon in our career.” Teir third season as juniors brings with it a lofty goal: to win every competition they enter. “Alex and I are both deter-
mined,” Eaton said. “I said to our coaches, ‘I want programs that will give us a gold medal at every com- petition we go to.’ I want to have a perfect season, so that when we go senior, everything is set in place.” Tat means more hard work
at DSC, where the team shares the ice with U.S. bronze medal- ists Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue, World bronze medal- ists Nathalie Pechalat and Fabian Bourzat and Canadian silver med- alists Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje, among many others. “We have five coaches, so someone always has an eye on us, which is nice,” Aldridge said. “Na- talia and Liz really drill us on our pattern dances [elements of the short dance] which is fantastic. Both can go hours fixing a step, which is great. “Pasquale and Massimo both
have fantastic artistic ideas and make our programs as rich, choreo- graphically, as they possibly can be. And Anjelika is very tough; she can drill you in the technical aspect of everything, and then say, ‘You need to express more, you need to make your movements bigger.’” Near top on the training
agenda: faster, better-synchronized twizzles (one-foot turns) and more challenging lifts. “We’re raising the bar,” Eaton
said. “We kind of stuck with the safer lifts last season. We went for level four, [but] we got into the lifts and out of the lifts and moved on. Tis season we’re really trying to try
In their third season to-
gether, Alexandra Aldridge and Daniel Eaton stepped their way to gold at the
U.S. Championships, where they performed “Lord of the Dance" for their free skate.
SKATING 31
new concepts and new variations and just see how crazy our lifting can get.”
Tese days, much of the work
is flowing into two new programs: a short dance incorporating the Blues pattern dance, and a free dance to music from Fiddler on the Roof.
“Te goal is to put out a strong,
aggressive program and have it be enjoyable and uplifting,” Aldridge said.
“We picked music that was a
different style than Riverdance, but allows me and Alex to have just as much, if not more, fun with each
other,” Eaton said. “We’re really working on our
expression. When you’re out there, the girl in front of you is the love of your life. Off the ice, you go back to being friends. It’s that ability to transition that develops a great team.”
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