The call of the rink

Windy Rohde was plainly born to glide across the ice.

By BARRY DAVIS
Windy Rohde (photo credit: Courtesy)
Windy Rohde
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Windy Rohde was plainly born to glide across the ice – and she will be in full, graceful view when the YamBaKerach ice skating season kicks off at the capital’s First Station compound next month.
YamBaKerach, which runs from March 3 through April 22, will take place on a 600-square-meter rink at the refurbished compound, where people of all ages and all levels of skating expertise can don blades and set off.
For the youngest patrons, there will be support accessories on offer in the shape of seals, enabling kids to meander across the ice in a seated position with an adult at hand. Older novice children will be able to get in on the skating act with the aid of stand-up “penguin” supports.
Rohde, along with two Israeli-born female cohorts, is part of one of the professional entertainment acts that will performing between April 10 and 22. Those will include breathtaking spectacles from international troupes The Florentine Circus – Circus of Fire and Water, and The Worlds of Fire and Water Meet Onstage.
ROHDE’S GIVEN name comes from the 1967 pop hit “Windy” by The Association, which her mother heard in the hospital elevator on her way to deliver her daughter. The 31-yearold skater from Texas, who now resides on a moshav near Hadera, brings rare professional and artistic skills to this part of the world. She has almost three decades of skating endeavor behind her, and a globe-trotting career that has seen her thrill audiences of all cultural stripes.
Her working life pattern was set out almost before she was big enough to stand on her own two feet.
“My mother is a skating coach, and when I was two years old she took me to a rink where she was teaching and sat me down in a corner, stuffed pieces of toilet paper into the smallest skates she could find, so they would fit me, and gave me some snow to play with,” she recalls.
“She thought I’d sit there and play, but apparently I got up and started to walk on the ice. I think I fell down a few times, but I’m sure the diaper cushioned my falls.”
Just one year later, she entered – and won – her first skating contest. Of course, there wasn’t much competition.
“I was the only competitor, so that was an easy win,” she laughs. “I think it was probably more of an exhibition. And by the way, the music I skated to was ‘Windy.’” Things eventually got serious for Rohde, and by the time she was eight she had taken on a punishing sports regimen.
“I’d get up very early every morning, and I’d practice my skating before school, from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m.,” she recalls. “And after school I’d go back to the rink for a few hours, and I’d have to be in bed every day by 9 p.m. I really enjoyed Saturdays, when I could have a lie-in in the morning. I was a rink rat. While my friends were having a good time, going to football games and to parties, I was going to bed at nine in the evening.”
Skating is in her genes. Her now-78-year-old Jewish grandmother was among the first female skating coaches in the US and only recently retired, and her mother has been at it for over three decades. She also has an aunt in the same line of business. Rohde maintained her skating exploits through most of her teen years, despite the toll it took on her social life.
“I sometimes wished I could have a normal life and have time to hang out with friends, and just do normal stuff,” she says.
By the time she was 17, she’d had enough. “I rebelled and told my mother I just wanted to have a normal life and, maybe, have a boyfriend.”
She did, however, do all her skating grade tests and even took part in the tough regionals level skating competition, doing well enough against hundreds of competitors from nine states to make it through to the next stage, which was only one rung down from the Olympic team.
But that was as far as she was prepared to take her skating at the time.
“I decided to do a degree in mathematics,” she recalls. “I hardly skated at all when I was at college.”
Still, the call of the rink proved too powerful for her to stay away long. With her degree secure, she began wondering what to do with the rest of her life.
“I didn’t know how I was going to make a living, and then my mother suggested I could make a few bucks traveling with an ice-skating show,” she explains. “I didn’t really miss skating while I was at university, but when I got back to skating in shows, I realized how much I missed it. It was such a big part of my life.
Before, I always thought of skating as something that set me apart from a normal life, but later I realized what a blessing it was to have such a talent. I thought maybe it wasn’t so bad not to be ‘normal’ and that being special was a good thing.”
Before long, she found work with the Dutch-based Holiday on Ice skating show company and spent the next eight years performing all over the globe. That eventually led her to this part of the world when the Isrotel hotel chain looked for skaters to perform in the “Wow on Ice” extravaganza.
A couple of Rohde’s skater pals were already on board the “Wow on Ice” team, and they recommended the Texan. The rest is history.
“I spent a year skating in Eilat – I was part ice princess and part beach bum – and I met my boyfriend, Chen, while I was in Eilat,” she says.
She says she is looking forward to demonstrating some of her ice-skating skills at YamBaKerach and hopes it helps spread the word to a wider consumer base.
“I want to show people in Israel that skating is something that can be fun, and it is really an art form that Israelis could like. I think they just don’t have enough opportunity to do it.”
For tickets and more information: *6220 or www.bimot.
co.il.