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'My life is a real adventure': Essex County figure skater turns hobby into career

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Rubie Diemer started skating at age two. Fast forward 17 years and the Essex County skater is now a cast member for Disney on Ice currently touring the United States and parts of Canada.

“I’ve grown to just love the performance aspect of it, the movement, the creativity everything like that,” says Diemer. “It’s such a free feeling to be out there.”

The show, titled ‘Mickey’s Search Party’ makes a stop in Detroit at Little Caesars Arena Feb. 17-20.

The 90-minute show has six segments, and features some of Disney’s most popular tales, including the Little Mermaid, Coco, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin.

“We have the Toy Story segment and we have all the green army men. I’m one of those,” says Diemer, who is also a clam in the Under the Sea performance.

“In the Frozen segment, they have snow that comes down. They really bring it to life,” she adds.

Diemer has been a competitive figure skater since she was seven years old.

She says the highlight of that part of her career, was when she qualified for the 2020 Canadian Tire National Skating Championships in senior ice dance with partner Petr Palee.

The pair skated to an eighth place finish in Canada.

Diemer says that was when she started thinking about a change.

“I was looking for a new dance partner and everything with COVID it was really a turning point for me,” says Diemer. “I just kind of decided that doing ‘Disney on Ice’ was the right choice for me.”

Diemer started in September 2021 and will tour until the end of April 2022.

It’s a long time away from her Woodslee family, but Diemer says she has found a second family with the Disney cast and crew.

“It’s so neat everybody is from a different part of the world,” says Diemer, who is bilingual. “There’s other cast members from France or Quebec that speak French, so it’s neat for me. I can communicate with them in another language.”

Tour Coordinator Tyler Hubbard agrees, the tour family is an important part of their success.

“We’re with each other, day in and day out, all day and night for eight to 12 months out the year and you turn around and do your next tour and you’re with 90 per cent of the same people,” says Hubbard.

“It just shows, in the show. Everybody has each other’s back.”

Hubbard says there are 80 people in the cast and crew, who tour to a new city every single week for eight months straight.

He says performers come from all over the world, including Russia, South America and France to name a few.

“It’s really special right now to be watching the Olympics with such a diverse group that gets excited about every single event,” says Hubbard.

The cast isn’t just made up of skaters, according to Hubbard, the performers are also expected to work on aerials or acrobatics.

“Their ‘off time’ that they have they’re all training constantly. Whether it’s in the gym or on a different apparatus in rehearsals that they’re not being asked to do but that they just want to learn a new skill,” says Hubbard.

“It’s incredible being able to bring back some sort of normalcy and entertainment,” says Hubbard.

“I really love it,” says Diemer. “It’s like my life is a real adventure right now, we go to a new city each week.”

The show being in Detroit this week, is the closest Diemer will get to her hometown, until the tour lands in Hamilton later this year.

“I used to do a lot of training in the Detroit area because it’s so close to the border. So it is almost like coming home for me,” says Diemer. “So it’s really exciting.”

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