A monstrous life on ice

Life in the fantasy lane--that’s what Adrienne Mohadjerin, AS ’06, chose when she graduated from UD.

So, now she‘s working in a different city in the U.S. or Europe every week. She lives in hotels, sometimes with UD buddy Brenda Greene, CHEP ’06, and uses her time off to see the world.

Mohadjerin is a professional ice skater for Feld Entertainment’s Disney on Ice.

After graduation, rather than plunging headlong into the serious world of chemical compounds, (her major was chemistry), she decided to go with her unofficial “major” and lifelong love--ice skating--as a temporary career and have a really good time in the process.

While at the University, Mohadjerin was a member of UD’s successful Synchronized Skating Team. When she graduated, the team’s coaches, Megan O’Donnell and Wendy Deppe, urged her to send a video of her skating prowess to Feld. She did and was immediately cast in its production of Monsters Inc., a 30-week tour of 32 U.S. cities, Montreal and Quebec that ended in May.

Mohadjerin played a monster. She’s not allowed to say which monster—company rules. “They say it ruins the ‘Disney magic.’ It’s like YoUDee; no one is supposed to know who is in the bird,” she says.

Even though Mohadjerin is a medal-winning competitive figure and precision skater, she says being precise, graceful and staying erect on the ice in a 40-pound head and body costume wasn’t easy. “It’s really hard to skate in and just as hard to see in. I stumbled around on the ice like a beginner. In this job, there’s no way you can take yourself too seriously.”

And why should she?

On the road, she says she gets to live in hotels where she doesn’t have to cook, make beds or do housework. When she’s not rehearsing or performing, she and her colleagues go sightseeing, camping or just enjoy themselves in a different part of the continent every week. “I enjoy living out of a suitcase. Everything’s at your fingertips and someone else cleans your room.”

Mohadjerin says her first week on the road was a whirlwind.

“That week was crazy. From learning how to eat on the road, to making new friends, to trying to stay in touch with old friends and learning the steps for the routines--it was exhausting!”

Her first roommate, Isabelle, was French Canadian and spoke very little English. “There were also people from Russia, Japan, the Czech Republic and Canada, and we ranged in ages from 18 to 40. It’s a very different and unique mix of people and everyone’s nice and helpful,” she says.

Rehearsing Monsters Inc., Mohadjerin was on the ice from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. with an hour break for lunch, but grueling workouts were not a new thing for her.

She began skating on the pond in back of her house in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., when she was 2 years old. She took ballet lessons for six years, until she was 12, and began figure skating lessons at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center when she was 10. From ages 10-18, she skated freestyle. Her coach at the center was Mikchail Zverev, a Russian ice dancer, who married her mother, Nancy, when Mohadjerin was 14.

It was during her college career that Mohadjerin switched to precision skating. She was part of UD’s Collegiate Synchronized Skating Team as it won three eastern sectional championships and three national medals.

“UD’s precision skating program had pretty much everything I wanted. The coaches were awesome. It’s a whole different way of skating,” she says.

Greene, who also was on the UD precision skating team, was in the cast of Monsters Inc., too, and will room with Mohadjerin when they both appear in the next Disney on Ice production, A Disneyland Adventure Featuring the Incredibles. This show, which began Sept. 15, will tour Western Europe for 30 weeks, taking Mohadjerin and Greene to cities in Scotland, England, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and Ireland.

“You don’t take this job for the money. It’s a fun job and now’s the time for me to do it. It’s been a great experience,” Mohadjerin says.

But, she has a serious relationship with her boyfriend and she says she misses him and her family very much. So, when the European tour is over in May, she says she’s planning on leaving Feld.

“As of now, I think I’ll be leaving Disney on Ice. I’m pretty sure I will, but who knows? I’m hoping to get a sales job with a chemical-based company that makes things like textiles, medical supplies or pharmaceuticals. Later in life, I’d like to teach high school chemistry,” Mohadjerin says.

--Barbara Garrison