What's artistic skating? Group tries to keep fading sport alive

Though far from its trendy heyday, the Fountain Valley skating center still caters to residents and a subculture of artistic dancers.

What's artistic skating? Group tries to keep fading sport alive

Fullerton College math professor Chuck McAbee, 68, holds on to competitive dance skater Dawn Cunko, 51, as they glide across the skating rink at the Fountain Valley Skating Center.


What are the rules of artistic skating?

There are several disciplines of artistic skating: The first and most prevalent at the Fountain Valley Skating Center is dance skating. This can be done solo or in a team and varies in style. American-style dance skating is more rigid, while international-style skating is flashier.

The other disciplines are figure skating and freestyle skating, which is much more popular with younger skaters, as it involves more leaping and spinning. Each type is broken down into categories for competition so that different levels can be judged according to the skaters' abilities.

Linda Jacques, 66, is a judge for artistic skating and used to compete herself. She's getting back into it now but has spent the past several years judging regional competitions.

"We look at posture, timing, pattern, execution and flow," she said, adding that scores are calculated on a range of 0 to 100. Most skaters land between 60 and 80. "To get anything higher than that, you have to be real good."

Costumes, which are usually ornate, expensive and tight-fitting, don't count in the scoring whatsoever, but dancers usually wear fancier costumes to impress judges. It doesn't work on Jacques though, she said.

"Even if I'm judging my best friend, which I have, I judge them solely on how they skate on the floor that day."

Dancers usually perform two or three dances and average out their scores. Usually there are several rounds, including elimination, semifinal and final rounds as needed.

For more on the rules of artistic skating, visit, the official website of USA Roller Sports, which coordinates championship competitions.

It's 8 a.m. at the Fountain Valley Skating Center, and organ music reverberates from the nearly 40-year-old facility nudged up against southbound I-405.

Inside, a tangle of roller skaters circle around the rink, dancing to traditional waltzes and tangos. Some skate backward in long, swooping strides. Some reach their arms out in an open embrace.

Most of them are over 50 years old. And they're dance skating at one of the most competitive rinks in the country.

With the national artistic skating championships just weeks away, coach and competitive dance skater Dawn Cunko tells the regular speed skaters lacing up their skates that there may be more organ music playing, as opposed to Top 40 hits better fitted for the exercise for which they came.

Fullerton College math Professor Chuck McAbee is a dance skater of about 15 years and knows 70 dance styles. He competes among the nation's best – not that there are that many these days. Nationwide, McAbee estimated there are about 2,000 competitive artistic skaters. It's a waning art, the actual organs long ago replaced by speakers hooked up to digital playlists.

McAbee practices at the Fountain Valley center every Monday and Friday morning during an adult-only session called Koffee Klutch because coffee is served between laps. The session comes just after club practice for the more serious dancers. They will practice almost every day until nationals.

Dance skating is competitive in nature, but with so few skaters still involved, the competition isn't exactly fierce. McAbee is 65 years old. At the championships in Albuquerque, N.M., next month, he'll be up against dancers mostly between the ages of 25 and 30.

"I'll suck, but that's OK," he said. "I have the courage to suck."

McAbee and his peers on the rink are there to have fun. But coach and rink owner Bob LaBriola is there to win. At 82 years old, LaBriola still teaches the art to students who visit him from around the country. He has coached more national champions than he can count and is known around the rink as the "guru of American-style dance skating." He has a thick New York accent, and his cellphone's ringtone is Queen's "We Are the Champions."

LaBriola has owned the skating center since it was built in 1976. He saw it through the roller-skating boom of the 1980s, when commercial developers opened big skating rinks, putting mom-and-pop rinks out of business. The pastime became less popular in the '90s and into the millennium. Now, roller skating is far from trendy, but LaBriola has worked to keep prices down and volume up – even if it means giving away 60,000 passes to schoolchildren, which he did this year. About 6 percent of those children used the passes, which was better than he expected, he said.

"I don't drive a Rolls-Royce. I don't live in Newport. But I get a tremendous sense of accomplishment from running this center," LaBriola said.

The skating center is one of about seven or eight rinks from Bakersfield to San Diego that still trains competitive dance skaters. In the same region during the '80s and '90s, there were about 55, LaBriola said. The only other competitive artistic skate center in Orange County is the Holiday Skate Center in Orange.

LaBriola is saddened by the decline but understands why the next generation isn't keeping the art alive. Two of his sons were awarded scholarships to prestigious schools for playing basketball and football; there are no scholarships for dance skating. And with fewer rinks, there's bound to be fewer skaters.

Still, the Fountain Valley center is home to about 35 competitive skaters, 20 of whom will compete in the national championship at the end of this month. And there probably isn't a child in Fountain Valley who hasn't strapped on skates at the center. Within a 5-mile radius of the skating center, there are 100 schools. Ninety-two fundraise at the facility, LaBriola said.

"I love the sport of skating, and I love the business of skating," he said. "Even though the competitive part of skating is not as popular, the business is increasing. And for me, that's competitive."


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