With Swag, Grace, and a Touch of Ice Cold Humor
With a little swag in her step and a smirk that cuts through the cold air, Gillian steps onto the ice in Frankfurt. It’s winter, and the rink is brutal — the kind of cold that crawls under your skin. But for Gillian, this isn’t discomfort. It’s home.
Her blades become extensions of her body she spins and weaves through the rink as if it was made for her. She owns the space she was once told didn’t belong to her.
The First Message
We found Gillian through Yuedam’s outreach program — a project we launched to connect with undiscovered talent across Europe. Late November, a profile caught our attention. Her skating was sharp, but her personality — the presence that came through her photos and videos — that’s what stayed with us.
We messaged her. We wanted to work together. What we didn’t expect was the story that came with her.
A Life on Ice
Gillian’s story starts in Mannheim, a city known for being a little rough around the edges. She first put on skates at age 9, and from that moment, the ice became her second skin. She was often the only Black girl on the rink, which came with its own quiet weight.
Skating is expensive. It’s time-consuming. And in a city like Mannheim, it’s not exactly the most obvious path. But Gillian kept showing up, long after the excitement wore off and the real work began. By the time she hit her twenties, she had gone from hobby skater to professional performer, skating in productions like Rock on Ice and Disney on Ice, carving her own lane in a sport that rarely makes room.
Why We Wanted to Work With Gillian
Yuedam doesn’t chase talent just because they’re good at something. What we’re drawn to is the way people move through life, the grit that lives underneath the talent. Gillian didn’t just practice routines — she built her whole identity on staying upright when life tried to knock her down.
We don’t believe athletes are separate from artists. And Gillian? She’s both.
The Shoot
Shooting Gillian wasn’t technical . It was personal. Everything about this shoot had to show her the way she sees herself. Not as a “symbol” or a token story, but as a woman who worked her ass off to turn grace into survival, and survival into art.
I shot with a Sony 85mm, staying along the edges of the rink because — confession — I can’t skate. That distance forced me to think more carefully about framing. If I couldn’t move with her, I had to let the camera tell her story the way a witness would — staying quiet, staying focused, capturing what was already there without dressing it up.
The breathing in my mic? That’s real too. That’s the sound of working in cold air, staying close to the moment, even when it’s imperfect. I cleaned it up, sure — but I left just enough so the final video still feels like you’re there, hearing her blades cut into the ice.
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The Second Yuedam Athlete
With this project, Gillian officially becomes Yuedam’s second athlete — not because she fits some ideal, but because she fits herself so unapologetically. Yuedam athletes don’t have to be the fastest or the flashiest. They just have to be real — people who build themselves from the ground up, who move the way they move because life demanded it from them. Gillian is exactly that. Tough, graceful, and honest.
Every time she steps onto the ice, it’s another chapter, and we’re proud to be part of it. And to anyone else out there, skating against the grain, building something no one expected — we see you.
Want to collaborate? Reach out to Yuedam, and let’s build something together.
