Get your skates on

Posted on November 16, 2010

The most famous of the seasonal ice skating rinks in London, Skate at Somerset House, will open from November 23 to January 23. This season a brand new programme, launched in partnership with Big Dance and English National Ballet, will offer more entertainment, more music and an expanded Skate School.

Highlights include Big Ice Dance Lunchtime Workouts; The Nutcracker Hour (skating to the Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, with the chance to win tickets to see English National Ballet’s new production at the London Coliseum); Big Ice Dance Day on January 13 and Somerset House Skate School, with Jayne Torvill, Britain’s greatest ice dance star, as its patron.

Tiffany & Co, partners of Skate at Somerset House, will add to the experience with their own Tiffany Blue Box Tuck Shop selling Tiffany jewellery, sweets and chocolates by master chocolatier Cocomaya. For families, “Breakfast With Tiffany”, with champagne and hot chocolate will warm up the early morning experience of skating on Saturdays before Christmas in the shadow of the specially decorated 40ft-high Tiffany tree.

Book online www.somersethouse.org.uk/ice_rink or call Ticketmaster 0844 847 1520.

Photograph © Gideon Mendel

Zoe Anderson

Zoë was born in Edinburgh, and saw her first dance performances at the Festival there. She is the dance critic of The Independent, and has also written for The Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman and Dancing Times. In 2002, she received her doctorate from the University of York for a thesis on “Nationhood and epic romance: Ariosto, Sidney, Spenser”. She is the author of The Royal Ballet: 75 Years and The Ballet Lover’s Companion.