Shae-Lynn Bourne: Creating collaboration

 Shae-Lynn Bourne is a world renowned figure skater as well as choreographer. She began her skating journey with her partner Victor Kraatz in 1991 and went on to become the first North American ice dance team to win a World title. In addition, her and her partner competed in 3 winter olympic games (1994,1998,2002).

After she retired from competitive skating, she went on to become one of the most recognized choreographers in the sport of skating. She has choreographed for numerous skaters including some big names like Yuzuru Hanyu (2x Olympic champion), Nathan Chen (10x national champion and olympic champion), and Evgenia Mededeva (2x world champion and olympic silver medalist). She has also won the ISU (International Skating Union) award for choreographer of the year twice.

When she is choreographing programs for her clients, she really focuses on collaboration and includes the skater as much in the process as she can. Since her clients are national, world, and olympic champions, it’s safe to say that they’ve been around the block a few times and understand their own skating style. Shae-Lynn takes these personal styles into account when she is crafting her programs which gives the skaters some autotomy when performing the pieces. 

She also believes that music is the foundation for everything and is they key to a successful program. Her now husband is a filmmaker and they work together to really bring the stories behind the music to life.This gives the skaters a narrative and a path to follow as they craft and skate their programs in competition. Since skating is not only an athletic sport but also a visual one, it’s important that skaters work different and unique body movements into their programs as much as possible. This increases their overall score as well as the connection with the audience and judges. 

In this short clip from YouTube, Shae-Lynn is choreographing a program for Camden Pulkinen where he is skating to M83. During the short clip, you can really see Shae-Lynn and Camden working together on the process. Finding ways to push Camden out of his comfort zøne while also giving him movements that will compliment him and the music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4zWaxxn_2o