WELCOME TO ELITE ARTISTIC
Elite is an artistic roller skating club full of incredibly talented athletes who compete all over GB and internationally!
Our Mission and Vision
We believe roller skating gives a skater more than just enjoyment and fitness. At Elite Artistic Skating Club, we coach skaters in personal development, goal setting/achieving, team work, resilience and how to approach/overcome challenges.
Our mission is to coach competitive artistic roller skating for local, regional, national and international events, aligned to World Skate and GBSA.
Our vision is to help create high performing athletes who are at the top of their game for national level competitions, to increase the standard of skating at our club continuously and to increase the number of international experiences for our skaters/coaches.
What is Artistic Skating?
Roller Dance
Artistic roller skating is similar to figure skating on ice. It is a deceptively difficult sport where the athlete works hard to make challenging skills look graceful. It is a sport where the athletes and coaches are always learning and developing their knowledge base and skills. It allows skaters and coaches to be creative and use inspiration to bring characters to life and show stories through movement.
Performance on Wheels
There are three disciplines: Dance, Figures and Free. Elite Artistic Skating Club focuses on Solo Dance and Couples Dance. This discipline is all about showing a variety of skating skills including jumps, one footed and two footed turns, spins and acro skills whilst performing to music. Solo dance is split into three sections - Compulsory dance, Style dance and Free dance. We have a mix of Solo skaters (skaters who skate by themselves) and couples skaters (skaters who skate with a partner).
Artistry
Roller Skating is a mix of different sports like gymnastics, sprinting, ballet and dance. It requires high levels of flexibility, strength, endurance, stamina, speed and agility. Usually high performing skaters need to train hard both on and off skates to achieve the correct level of these skills and improve their overall skating.
Most people are fooled by the beautiful costumes and elegance of roller skating. This sport takes guts. It is great for those who have no fear of falling over!
What does Artistic skating entail?
"A performing art on wheels. It's like the theatre, the rink is the stage"
Elite focuses on National and International level artistic dance roller skating both for Solo and Couples dance. See our International selections and results on our About Us page and follow events on our Blog.
Disciplines of artistic roller skating
Solo and couples dance has a mixture of skills involved. It is the culmination of speed, endurance, agility, balance, flexibility, elegance, power and performance.
The difference between dance and freestyle skating is that free skating is focussed on rotations on a jump, number of revolutions on spins - most of the elements in free skating are based around jumps and spins. This is the discipline where skaters practice to achieve double and triple jumps. Roller dance is more about edges, one footed turns, small jumps and spins, completing set steps with great execution and dancing to different genres of music. Figures is completely different because there is no music involved at all. In this discipline, skaters follow circles drawn on the rink and demonstrate different edges and turns in a series, the aim is to stay as true to the circle as possible.
There are also options in roller skating for team skating in categories such as Precision, Show and Quartets - Elite artistic only competes in these type of events for fun at the end of the season, usually at the Winter solos Dance Festival. There are no international level teams in GB in these disciplines.
Team GB do send a selection of fantastic athletes to represent the country at international events each year in the Figures, Free, Solo Dance and Couples Dance categories.
Rules
World Skate provide the specifications for the rules and regulations of each sport. For artistic roller skating Solo Dance and Couples Dance, they outline the elements which will be included in the next seasons Style Dance or Free Dance and select the compulsory dances for the Espoir and below age categories. These rules can be found on the WS website.
Elite are a club under the governing bodies World Skate (WS) and GB Skate Artistic (GBSA). World Skate is an international body who are striving to increase participation across many disciplines of sports on wheels, and hopefully one day add disciplines into Olympic level competitions. Some of the sports included are Skate boarding, Speed skating, Roller derby, Roller hockey and of course, Artistic roller skating. The Chairman for Artistic is Nicola Genchi.
World Skate organise several competitions internationally across the year to allow top artistic athletes from each country to compete against each other in different age categories. The age of a roller skater is determined by the age they are turning in the year of competition between 1st January and 31st December.
The WS age categories are
World Skate Elements
Each season, the artistic dance skaters are required to perform a series of elements and transition steps to music of their choice. Each element has a value in points, the value of an element can be increase by increasing the difficulty. The judging system is based on RollArt.
Some of the elements skaters are required to skate are
- Artistic Sequence
- Travelling
- Cluster
- Footwork Sequence
- Rotational Lift
- Choreographic Sequence
- Dance Steps Sequence
- One partner Sequence
- Choreographic Pose
The Style Dance is slightly different to a free dance as it has an element called Pattern Dance, this is similar to compulsory dance - every skater will skate the same steps to the same timing. Because of this, the Style Dance music will need to adhere to a specific genre for that category. Some of the genres include
- Latin Medley
- Classic Medley
- Spanish Medley
- Folk
- Swing Medley
- Modern Medley
- Ballroom
- Musical/Opera
- Rock Medley
Our team of dedicated coaches are there for the Elite Artistic Athletes to help guide them through the challenging world of RollArt. The most challenging part of the season for the skaters is navigating their way through the new World Skate rules and learning new Pattern dances. This part of the season is where a lot of collaboration between the Elite Coaches and Skaters happen so all the knowledge can be processed. This then leads onto the skaters' favourite time of year - the choreography stage.
Some of the competitions held are: World Championships, European Championships and Artistic World Series (AWS). The AWS is slightly different because it involves semi-final events where skaters get a World Ranking. The top 10 athletes in Junior and Senior categories qualify for the event Final.
These events are live streamed.
GB SKATE ARTISTIC
GB Skate Artistic is the governing body for artistic skating in GB, it is also part of the British Roller Sports Federation (BRSF) which caters for roller sports within GB.
GB Skate Artistic are a group of volunteers who organise events in GB like competitions, training days and seminars to enable athletes to compete and increase their knowledge. They are a team of ex-skaters, officials and spectators who strive to get artistic roller skating to thrive as a sport and community. To find out more about the organisation please visit their website.
Over the years GBSA have organised training days with some of the Worlds leading coaches and top athletes which have all been fantastic experiences for the GB skaters.
The GBSA team are split into Dance and Figures&Free. The competitions over the year are split into these disciplines as the sport has been growing rapidly over the past few years. One of he main focuses of GBSA is to grow the sport, and the standard each year, which we have been achieving recently. The GBSA head of disciplines are involved in decision making about the GB competitive squads, training days and competitions.
We have a GBSA home rink in Great Yarmouth - Breydon Arena. This is a fantastic facility for our Skaters and the first one of its kind completely dedicated to artistic roller skating. We have several events hosted here over the year such as the National Championships and Roller Dance Cup Final.
There are different levels of competitions that GBSA and Clubs (affiliated to GBSA) organise through the year:
1. Club competitions - these are hosted by clubs around GB and normally involve skaters competing against other skaters in their region. Club competitions focus on compulsory dance and involve team/duo events which are super fun for skaters. These competitions follow the White marking system.
2. Roller Dance Cup - this event is held over a number weekends throughout the year. The competitors are ranked at each event and given a corresponding number of points. The athletes with the top 5 points in each category qualify for the final at the end of the year to compete to be crowned the Roller Dance Cup Champion. This competition follows both White marking and RollArt marking (depending on Test level).
3. GBSA National Championships - this event involves the best in Britain gathering to compete under RollArt for their national raking and a bid to compete internationally at competitions such as World Championships, European Championships and Cup of Europe.
How do I get involved?
Elite Artistic Skating Club are run by a team of volunteer coaches and committee members. We are focussed on competition skating.
We have limited rink time and resources so run a waiting list.
Elite is at full capacity and is not currently taking on new members.
If you are interested in learning how to skate, please join our sister skating school where you will learn from our head coach at the Lauren Jarvis School of Skating.
Everyone begins their journey here
Let's start with the basics! Every great skater once started out as a beginner in grades or Learn2Skate classes! This is where you learn the core skills that it takes to be an artistic skater like balance, resilience, agility. We believe artistic roller skating can be enjoyed by all genders, all ages and abilities. Elite are linked to the Lauren Jarvis School of Skating (LJSS), both are fully inclusive. Skaters who graduate from LJSS are invited to join the Elite competition team, depending on capacity at Elite. Elite and LJSS provide a skating experience for anyone who would like to get some wheels on! LJSS is all about recreational skating and taking skills to the next level, Elite is all about competitive artistic roller skating and becoming an athlete.
Vision
Our head coach - Lauren Jarvis, founded the skating school to increase participation in communities around Gloucester. Skating is not a well-known sport, Lauren's aim is to get more people involved and on wheels!
"Everyone starts as a beginner, great skaters are formed in basic skills sessions. Passions start to show and those dedicated enough will continue to practice. There is so much talent to be found"
Lauren Jarvis -- Director
Why?
To become a member of the Elite Artistic Skating Club competition team, skaters must first be a member of the skating school and train with the coaches. This is so you have a good understanding of basic skills and techniques.
What?
The skating school hosts a variety of Learn2Skate classes for all ages around the county.
Skaters learn basic skills whilst having fun and completing the STAR levels created by Lauren.
Discover Artisic Roller Skating with Elite
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