- A growing number of Olympic skaters are training in Utah with choreographer Randi Strong.
- Strong, lacking skating skills, is translating her dance expertise to enhance skaters' performances.
- Subtle movements taught by Strong can be the difference in competitions.
SALT LAKE CITY — A growing number of Olympic skaters are coming to Utah to take their performance to the next level — not at an ice rink, but in a dance studio to work with a sought after local choreographer.
"I have zero actual skating skills. What I do bring to the table is all my experience from a professional dance career, and we work on things like lines and subtlety and performance," said Randi Strong, creator of Studio Strong.
On this day, she was working with Olympic ice dancing team Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson, who represent Great Britain. They came from their training ground in Montreal for an intense week of dance coaching.
"We do ice dance, and even though it sounds obvious, the dance element is extremely important, and that's something that Randi is such an expert in," said Lewis Gibson.
They learn and practice new choreography on the studio floor and adjust combinations when steps or sequences won't work for the ice.
"When you have blades and ice is slippery, things don't always work the same way," said Fear.
Strong has quickly learned how to adapt choreography for the ice, once they move practice from the studio.
"She's very much like a language translator, because she's been around figure skating for many years. She's gotten amazing at just being able to translate the floor work to the ice," said Gibson.
On top of the routines are the much smaller details and nuances that have to be coached to skaters. Strong demonstrates performance skills as subtle as the gaze of an eye and the flex of a hand.
"It can be something as similar as my shoulders sitting here. I just roll my shoulders back and all of a sudden, I'm exuding confidence, and I look proud and I'm presenting," she said.
She also sharpens the dancers' movements: Heads don't turn, they "snap." A kick becomes a "flick."
"Maybe the untrained eye doesn't even know why they think it's better, and then you see it and you're like, 'Oh my gosh, wait, that made a really big difference,'" Strong said.
At this level of skating, it is these small gestures that can mean the difference between gold and silver. In fact, in the 2026 Winter Olympics, the gold medal competition in ice dancing came down to a razor-thin 1.43 points.
"The subtleties absolutely make the difference," Lewis said. "We want the viewer, the audience, to forget that we're skating."
"It can absolutely mean the difference between gold and silver," Strong added. "If anybody watched the Olympics in Milan, it was a very, very, very close competition, especially in ice dance."
And for that reason, many of the top figure skaters have also worked with Strong, including Alysa Liu, Amber Glenn and Ilia Malinin.
While the next Olympics are a long way off, team Lilah and Lewis is preparing for competitions and world championships. Along that journey, they will rely on their not-so-secret weapon here in Utah.
"We've had a huge project of improving our skating skills more than we ever have before," Fear said. "And we're really already seeing the fruits of our labor."
