I first caught glimpses of Shawnee Shawn doing her thing during the first JB Legends of the Wood event in Chicago at Lynwood Roller Rink.
I watched her glide effortlessly past the JB skaters on the large rink, seamlessly transitioning from backwards to forwards and side surfing with incredible style and grace.
Like me, Shawnee Shawn is tall and strong looking, but it was her combination of speed and elegance that immediately stood out to me. In fact, I was so impressed that I pointed her out to my friend [who was standing beside me at the time] Laverne.
It wasn’t until around a week later that I was properly introduced to Shawnee by George at The Rink. At this point, I wasn’t even looking for anyone else to interview — but the moment I looked up and saw her, I immediately began deleting files from my phone just to make space for our conversation!
"The essence of skating is freedom. I mean I fellowship with everybody in here. But ultimately when I get on the floor it can become just me, the floor and the music."
~Shawnee Shawn
7 Questions
Q.1: When did you begin skating?
"I started at 25."
Q.2: What's your story?
Q.3: What's the journey been like for you?
"You know, it's very, it's been wonderful.
I've met some very wonderful people. I always say everybody in here is a skating testimony. We all, you know, go through life, and we try to make it here.
And what I mean by try to make it here is, you know, just the different things that go on in life. But when we come into this building, this building is a place of love and camaraderie and fellowship. So the journey for me has been wonderful.
So the journey for me has been wonderful. I've had so many people help me on this journey. And when I skate, I skate for everybody that helps me. If I come in here and somebody say, ooh, my leg hurt, ooh, my back hurt, I tell them, I'm finna go skate for you. And I mean that. So that is why I skate as fast as I do, and I skate with such energy. It's I'm skating for everybody."
Q.4: What you appreciate most about skating?
"I am very fortunate that when I come skating, I come skating. It isn't so much that I may have had a bad day. But it's just the joy of, oh my God, it's Monday.. Oh my God, it's Tuesday morning. Oh my God, it's Thursday. And that is the energy I bring when I skate."
Q.5: What's influenced your style of skating? Because you did stand out to me when I first saw you.
"Well, my initial journey was to let everybody know that everybody in Chicago does not J.B. skate. We do so many things here. We have a lot of categorisations of how we skate.
But mine was to try to mesh all of them. So essentially I would classify myself as just a freestyle roller. But I do have elements of artistic skating, elements of J.B. skating.
But really just riding the beat and just feeling the flow of the music. So ultimately all those together combine my style of skating. And I really think of it like a boxing match, a seamless boxing match. Boxing, we have so many combos, we throw in so many elements. So that's really what I try to bring to my skating. All those elements."
Q.6: How would you describe what the essence of skating is for you?
"The essence of skating is freedom. I mean I fellowship with everybody in here. But ultimately when I get on the floor it can become just me, the floor and the music.
So it's really just allowing the flow, the beat, the rhytm of the music to flow through me, so that artistic expression can come out. And so we all have different levels of poetry, emotion, when we skate. But for me it's just to really to tell the story of the song with how I roll. So it's not just doing moves, but it's really telling the story of whatever the song is."
Q.7: So you say you've travelled, what drove you to go to Europe?
"You know my first international party I went to was Amsterdam in 2020. Right before the boarder closed, they had a skating party. Right before COVID. And I just wanted to go to Amsterdam. But what I feel when I go to Europe, it is a bit different than here. It's very happy, it's very upbeat, it's very dancey, it's very, it's a different level of joy when I go to Europe. And from that party my conquest was to try to go to Europe every year. So so far I've skated in Amsterdam, I've skated in Rotterdam, I've skated in Berlin, I've skated in Barcelona, of course in London.
And that is my fire. But from that one in Amsterdam it really just like flowed to me, like, I need to try to go to all of them. I may go to the Paris party this year, I'm not sure.
But that's essentially what Europe brings to me. It brings just this really upbeat, driven skate. You know, everyone here listens to a lot of music that we listen to here. And, I appreciate hearing it from the ear that they hear it from. Because it's different from the ear we hear. So whereas I might hear a song on a long beat and you have to hear it on the upbeat.
So it's very much just dancing so I love skating in Europe."
➡️ Watch Video: Meet Shawnee Shawn [19 Years of Skating]
➡️ Listen via YouTube
➡️ Previous interview: 7 Questions With [Retired Police Offier] Emma, Chicago, USA Edition
➡️ Listen to the 7 Q's series on Spotify or Apple Podcast
Kelly
Cranial Osteopath | Wellbeing Coach | Roller Skate Instructor
🗯️ What have you learned from Shawnee's story? Tell us in the comments below or, leave us a lil emoji response.
