member spotlight
perfecting, with Nancy giving
technical assessments and
Laura building from them.
Choreography was also a
keystone to Nancy’s coaching
style; as Laura observes, there
were always one or two bars of
a song where any given mentee
of hers would perform a Rush
signature piece of footwork.
With the guidance of her trainer,
Laura could hold her own at
freestyle competitions on an
international level.
Before she knew it, the name
“Laura Bernhardt” had become
well-established across the
figure skating community. She
appeared in a commercial when
she was still in her late teens,
boosting her to professional
status. And after her first year
in college, she was offered
a summer job as the starring
skater in an ice show in South
Africa. It was an unpassable
opportunity, and to keep up
on her required credits for
school while she was away,
she organized a sort of ‘study
abroad’ trip so other Boston
University students could tag
along with her to conduct their
own research. That is how, while
her fellow students were in
the desert researching African
Bushmen, she was able to skate
in Johannesburg, Cape Town,
and Pretoria, further increasing
her reputation.
The prowess that Laura
came to earn in the ice skating
arena is impressive considering
the limitations she faced. She
was born with deformed legs
– her knees turn inward rather
than bending straight out,
which made it difficult for her
to perform many stunts and
turns as other skaters could
on the ice. Many trainers tried
to stretch her knees beyond
their limitations, resulting in torn
ligaments and several trips to
the emergency room. But the
more time she spent training,
the more she learned to work
around her physical constraints.
“When I come in, I navigate by
graphs,” she says. When Laura
skates, she thinks of her hips,
knees, and feet in relation to
8
HACHEALTHCLUB.COM
[Laura] was
born with
deformed legs
– her knees turn
inward rather
than bending
straight out.
the ice and how each body part
forms a specific angle or shape.
When bringing oneself in for a
turn, for example, the motion
creates a cone-shape with the
point touching down on the ice’s
surface. As you find the center
of the turn and straighten up,
that cone becomes a cylinder.
By figuring out the geometry
of skating, Laura could find
workarounds and adjust to the
conditions caused by her knee
issues.
Spending her
youth in Los
Angeles started
a big-city
streak for
Laura. She
ended up
staying in
Boston,
where she
met and
eventually
married her
then-husband,
after completing
her architecture degree.
During that time in 1979, she
took up a position as a figure
skating consultant at the
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. As a trainer, she
found opportunities to impart
her ideas of graphical figure
skating on her trainees. In the
early 90s, shortly after having
her son at age 38, Laura
moved to Rochester when her
husband’s job was relocated.
The move was hard on her and
her newborn, who spent many
of his
first few
months
in the
hospital.
Being
uprooted in the
midst of his sickly
state was far from ideal. But
when she got there, Laura came
to love Rochester; she made
a home, had her second child,
and retired from training at 42
years old.
Only in the past couple of
years has Laura strayed from
busy city life to lay her head
in the suburbs. She and her
husband divorced, leading her
to move North East with the
kids for a short period. Then,
early in 2016 she found a short-
sale property on the market in
Hockessin and decided to go
for it. “Nobody was looking at
it because the wallpaper was
coming off two stories up with
chunks of plaster,” Laura reports
with a grin. Bringing the house
up to the standards of the
development has posed little
challenge for Laura, and she’s
enjoyed finally being able to put
her architectural degree to use.
Having spent so many years
in or about the dance and
figure skating realm, Laura has
lots to speak on about how
training methods have changed
and evolved over the years.
When she was a figure skater
at the rink in Santa Monica,
the coaches took all of their
students out to the beach to