The 2019 British Figure Skating Championships took place in Sheffield this weekend.
Ice dancers Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson, who competed for GB at this year’s European Championships and World Championships, placed first both in the rhythm dance and in the free dance to win the gold medal with 195.70 points.
In an interview with the “Blossom on Ice”, which Lilah and Lewis had given before the start of the tournament, the skaters told how the process of choosing music and setting programs for this season went, what records they set when cutting musical passages, who Lilah does interviews with in her free time and why Lewis switched from footballers to skaters.
This year, the music pieces for the rhythm dance should be chosen from musicals or operettas. What is your favourite musical so far?
Lilah:
Okay. That’s a difficult question.
Lewis:
I know mine, so I’ll go first and you’ll think about it (smiles). My favorite musical is “Hamilton”. It’s a new musical about American history. I feel like it would be really cool for the ice, but I don’t think it’s well-known enough yet.
Jason Brown skated to “Hamilton” last year, didn’t he? The program was really good.
Lewis:
For sure. And it’s by far the best musical I’ve ever seen.
Lilah:
A little secret, Lewis listens to it when he warms up for competitions (smiles).
As for me, I grew up singing, so I sang a lot of repertoire from musicals. I’d say my favorite is “Les Misérables” , and I also love “Phantom of the Opera”. I know people are sick of them a little because they’re overused, still, I love the music.
Lewis:
I think we’re really happy with our choice though. “The Blues Brothers” is working for us so far.
Lilah:
We wanted to pick something more unique. But the costumes for our rhythm dance are way too hot, I’m telling you (laughs).
They look very stylish.
Lilah:
Thank you. Our friends from China (Shiyue Wang / Xinyu Liu) have suits, too. Sometimes we get to skate back-to-back at competitions. But although we have the same coaches, we didn’t know our costumes were so similar (laughs).
Can you talk a little bit about the process of creating your programs?
Lilah:
We started very early, because of my school. I had exams right after Worlds, so we used that time to work on the choreography. After Worlds in Japan we went straight to Montreal to work with Roman, but we brought our ideas to him before Worlds, since we had such an early schedule.
Lewis:
Usually at Worlds we’re starting to cut the music, which is kind of distracting, I have to say. But it’s a process that takes a long time. We are a team that has many versions of the same music.
Lilah:
Yeah, our free dance… or short?.. Which one’s number 31? Oh yes, free dance.
Lewis:
Yes, free dance version 31.
Lilah:
31 of music cuts.
Lewis:
We were up to a solid 40 something on last year’s short dance.
Lilah:
So when people say they like it, it’s worth it. But in terms of the choreography process, we show up to the rink, we listen to the music, we let Roman go into his magic world where the choreography just comes to him, then we hear things ourselves that we’d like to contribute and in the end we play around with ideas. As we’ve said before, he’s quite open to our ideas, which is really lovely.
Lewis:
It always starts with where you hear an element on the music. We start to figure out what the music looks like in our head, then come up with an idea for a lift or something like that.
Lilah:
Yeah, we map out the elements first, but it’s a pretty quick process, actually.
Your free dance last season was received so well by the audience, it was a real success. How difficult was it for you to come up with new ideas for the free dance to live up to such high expectations?
Lewis:
It was hard.
Lilah:
For sure, we knew that there would be expectations. We’re kind of known for being entertaining, which is something we discovered through disco music. That’s something that brought us a lot of joy last season, so we wanted to go down that road instead of using something dramatic.
Lewis:
And that was basically the inspiration for both music choices this year, to bring similar energy and entertainment.
Lilah:
Yeah, and something that would take people back in time to their youth, too. Because a lot of people are like, “Oh, I used to dance to Madonna with my boyfriend back in the day.” It’s nice to have the audience forget where they are for a bit. It was difficult to do that though, because we wanted to stay in that realm, yet expand in a different direction. I think we managed that with Madonna.
Lewis:
When we chose the music, it was one of the very first ideas-
Lilah:
And we hated it (laughs).
Lewis:
We explored many other things first, but we came back to Madonna. We had to convince Roman though, because he was like, “I don’t think so, I’m not sure how this would work.”
Lilah:
However, Lewis had this vision in his mind of bits of music, so he actually made sure he made a rough cut of it before we presented it to Roman. Otherwise I think he would’ve said no.
Who came up with the idea to skate to Madonna?
Lilah:
It was my mom’s idea.
Lewis:
When she brought it up, I was like, “Absolutely not”. Then we started to listen, and I could picture the way that I wanted it to be.
Lilah:
And I trust him, so if he likes it that means it’s good. I’ll just skate to whatever, honestly, as long as it’s fun.
Is that the type of music you listen to in your free time?
Lewis:
My dad is obsessed with disco music, so when I was younger I knew all the songs. When I mentioned the idea, I was like, “You know, we could use this, and this…” There are just so many great songs to pick from.
Lilah:
I don’t listen to that much music in general. When I warm up, for example, I listen to podcasts. So if you see me laughing and you wonder why – that’s why (smiles).
By the way, I know that you have your own podcast. Would you please tell us about it?
Lilah:
I started it two years ago when I finished high school. I had a year off, and I just wanted to interview people who are successful at whatever they do. I wanted to show the journey that led to that success, as people go through struggles and obstacles as well as amazing times. And I think it’s important to show young people what it takes and to inspire them to keep going.
Then I started college, so I didn’t have time. But this summer I started interviewing the skaters in Montreal, just to show all the fans who we are as people. They know our programs, they know our skating, but we also have some really random things that we love to do. I released the one with Nathan Chen and I had a huge response from that, which was so exciting.
Lewis:
Yeah, you’ve recorded a lot.
Lilah:
I’ve recorded a lot. I interviewed Gabby Papadakis, too, which will be interesting for everyone to listen to. I was surprised a lot.
So it seems like we’re colleagues?
Lilah:
Yeah, exactly. I just need one of these (points to the voice recorder). They look very high-tech. I use my phone, so you can hear the bus in the background and things like that… it’s really bad, but it’s okay (laughs).
Coming back to your free dance, the ending is rather impressive, as it was last year. Is it your signature now?
Lilah:
Yeah, we like a reaction from the audience, when there’s a “huh” or “whoa.” We’re like, “That’s cool” (smiles).
Lewis:
It’s like, “They’re still going. They’re four minutes in and they’re still going” (laughs).
Lilah:
We got used to it. So by the end of it, it’s become normal for us. It’s nice to see the reactions. To be honest, our knees don’t love the end of the program from the sliding movement, but the audience does.
Lilah, as well as skating, you also attend University. How do you balance your education and training?
Lilah:
It’s hard. The competition season’s a lot to handle, but luckily there’s also a lot of travel involved. For example, we have time at the airport, during the flight, and then a three-hour bus ride. So, that allows me to study even more than I usually do. I basically use travel time and try to break it up so it’s manageable. So far, it’s okay.
Do you have to go to the university often?
Lilah:
I go about twice a week. I’m attending part-time, but we have a set schedule, so we’re organized and I have time for homework and everything.
Lewis:
Luckily, with so many teams and so much ice time in Montreal, we can always ask, for example, if we can do these two sessions or something else, that kind of stuff. You can either skate in the morning or in the afternoon until, like, 5:00.
Lilah:
If we start at 11:00, we’re like, “Whoa, it’s nighttime,” because usually we start at 7:30. But no, it’s a good balance. I really like doing both.
Lewis, I know that before skating you used to play football as a kid. How did you switch to figure skating?
Lewis:
Well, basically the reason was that my dad was a professional football coach in Scotland-
So, you had no choice?
Lewis:
Yeah, kind of. Basically, Scotland is just football mad. It’s, like, that is their number one sport.
Were you good at football?
Lewis:
Yeah, I was pretty good. I played as a center midfielder.
So how did you switch to figure skating?
I really liked the TV show called “Dancing on Ice”. The first year I was just watching it on TV, it was a big show in the UK. One day I went to my local rink and tried it… and I couldn’t stop. I did both for a couple of years, then I started leaving football behind and focused more on skating.
Lilah:
You were 11, right?
Lewis:
Yeah, I was 11 when I started figure skating, and I was doing better at that than at football. Obviously my dad knew the pathway to football, and probably thought, “yeah, just do skating” (smiles).
Lilah:
And his dad is so into it now. He’ll send me messages saying like, “You got this, Madonna,” for the free dance. He sells skates and guards, and he’s really into it.
Lewis:
Yes, he sharpens skates now and does different stuff on the side, because it was something we never had in my area.
That’s great! Thank you so much for the interview. Good luck!
Ludmila ORLOVA