The Power of Mariah Bell and Adam Rippon

Mariah Bell is stepping out of her comfort zone this season, and she's doing it with Adam Rippon by her side.

"It's the beginning of a new quad and I want to test my limits for my own choreography and different programs," Bell said upon returning home to Lakewood, California, after a career-best performance at NHK Trophy in November. "I wanted to go a little bit out of the box and so Shae-Lynn [Bourne] was that and Adam was that, too."

Though Bell knew early on that she would be working with renowned choreographer Bourne for her free skate, bringing in Rippon was still a question mark during the offseason.

In fact, during a planning meeting with coach Rafael Arutunian, she meant to suggest she could potentially ask Rippon for Canadian choreographer Jeffrey Buttle's contact information when she, instead, simply said, "Maybe Adam."

"He said, 'Yes! Adam!'" the 2017 U.S. bronze medalist laughed at the memory. "And I said, 'No way,' because inside, that's what I really wanted. I knew he was going to be super busy, so I called him and he was able to make some time in his schedule and we actually got the program together really fast."

Busy is an understatement when it comes to Rippon's schedule since the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018. From competing—and winning—"Dancing with the Stars" to traveling almost daily to fulfill speaking engagements and media appearances, Bell's former training mate has been on the go since winning the Olympic Team Event bronze medal with his U.S. teammates.

"I think if I wouldn't have known him before, I maybe would have been a little too star struck," Bell admitted regarding Rippon's new level of fame. "You never know how someone is going to be when they're so famous and the way he is, is the way he is. He's not some fake something, so I feel lucky that I had that relationship built up with him for a few years before because it just made it natural to work with him."

The choreographer-and-skater partnership felt even more organic because of the roles they filled as training mates in Lakewood under Arutunian's watch.
 

"When he was training, he was definitely a mentor to everyone," Bell shared. "I would get advice from him and he would help me with technical things every once in a while, while we were training together."

Having a foundation and history to their relationship also factored into the final music choice.

"Last year, he came to the rink one day and was like, 'Mariah, you should skate to 'The Power of Love' by Celine Dion,' and I was like, 'I have always wanted to skate to Celine Dion, that would be so awesome,'" Bell said. "So, when we were talking about doing a program together, we immediately went to Celine Dion and then it was just kind of finding the right song."

The two went back and forth on a few different options before deciding on "To Love You More"—Rippon's suggestion.

"When I heard it, it had so much more variation to it than 'The Power of Love,' so I thought it would be better for a program, especially a short, because there's not a ton of time," she said.

Then, it was time to get to work.

Within two days in April, Bell and Rippon, who confirmed his retirement from competitive skating in November, had a general layout of her program. They had to go back and make some tweaks after rule changes were announced following the International Skating Union Congress in June.

Ultimately, the changes didn't deter them. Having the same technique was a huge advantage to working with a training mate.

"He truly understands how much speed I need, especially with Rafael's technique and different patterns, or where it needs to be on the ice," Bell noted. "It was easy to work with him because he's very understanding of everything, but he also gave me things that were challenging and was like, 'Yeah, deal with it, that's what you're going to have to figure out how to do,' so it was a good balance."

After laughter subsided from Bell's attempt at a Rippon impression, she was happy to report that he has been pleased with her performances, including the more difficult choreographic elements he threw at her, so far this season.

"He watched all of [my competitions] and he was really happy," Bell smiled. "I talked to him after everything was done at NHK and he was really, really proud of me. We talked about how I've been able to, so far this year, skate consistent and that's just my goal—it doesn't have to be perfect, but it needs to be solid."

Bell, who won a bronze medal at Golden Spin in Zagreb, Croatia, a few weeks after this interview, attributed her consistency and performance this season partly to being able to learn from Rippon's own ability on the ice.

"He made everything such good quality, and then the way he was able to truly tell a story—you look at his programs that he did last year: his short was completely different from his long, so he can do a variety of things," Bell said with admiration. "I think he can do anything, actually, on the ice, in terms of musicality and programs."

"I definitely wanted to take just his quality and the way he skates a program. He told me one time he didn't feel like he was competing each time. It helped him to feel more like he was performing in a show, so it's really about performing for him and that's something I can really relate to."

Bell is taking the performance lessons she's learned from working with Rippon, including his confidence, onto the ice with two emotional and contrasting programs.

"The story of my short is like, she's telling this guy that she'll love him more than this other girl," Bell said. "It's about showing that you're better and you know it, so now everyone else is going to know it. There's this part that says, 'Believe me, I'll make you see,' and he says that's what it's all about. You already know, and you want everyone else to know."

Bell's free skate, set to music by Ludovico Einaudi, however, pulls at the heartstrings from the opposite end of the spectrum centered on the concept of loss in life.

"Maybe it's a person, or it's more like the loss of a person," Bell said of the story arc in the program put together by Bourne. "It's figuring out how you deal with the loss and at the end, you discover you can live without them. Maybe not without them, but you can live with them not with you—it's a freedom of being able to live with the loss."

Both programs have resonated with the figure skating community and the positive response hasn't gone unnoticed on Bell's end.

"I feel like the thing that has really helped me this year is telling a story," Bell said. "It's helped me stay in the moment of each program versus thinking of the whole program at once, so it's very exciting to get that feedback. That's what I feel, even when I train, like the way that I smile, and the way that I feel when I'm doing my short, I train it the same way at home."

Now, with her best outing of her career at NHK Trophy and the Grand Prix Series in the rearview mirror, Bell's focus is set on the 2019 GEICO U.S. Figure Skating Championships where she plans to increase her technical difficulty and vie for her first U.S. title in Detroit.

"There's still a lot that I can grow into," Bell said, mentioning she and Rippon already made changes that she is fine-tuning, and she would be paying Bourne a visit prior to the national event. "Hopefully, both programs will look a little more polished and detailed."