In September 2023, Ye-lim Kim took the ice at Harvard with Christina Perri’s “A Thousand Years” and turned a pop ballad into a living archive of edges, stretch, and stillness.
The melody carried memory. Her timing carried the room. Viewers latched onto the gentle rises in phrasing and those clean transitions that skaters call control, yet the mood stayed warm and familiar. That blend is why the performance keeps traveling online. Millions have watched the clip that On Ice Perspectives filmed, and the comments read like a chorus of thank-yous.
The choice of music matters. Perri wrote the song for the Twilight cycle, and it became a staple at weddings and school recitals where sentiment needs structure.
On the ice, that structure gives a skater room to breathe, to hold a line for one extra beat, to let a spiral feel like a memory rather than a trick. You know what? That’s half the art in exhibition skating. It is less about points and more about mood.
There is also the camera. On Ice Perspectives, created by former Team USA ice dancer Jordan Cowan, shoots at ice level. The lens moves with the skater, so the glide reads as glide and not as dots on a rink. Historians of sport love this shift, because it changes what audiences remember. Instead of a list of elements, they recall a feeling, a path, a shape.
Harvard’s rink with a cause
This performance was part of An Evening with Champions, the long-running student-run show at Harvard that raises money for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute through the Jimmy Fund. The event has pulled in more than fifty years of casts and more than three million dollars for research and care. It is a college production with a national footprint, which sounds like a contradiction until you see the names that pass through.
The 2023 edition brought a mix of Olympians and rising skaters, and campus outlets treated it like a local tradition and a small festival all at once. Photographs from that week show the range of styles on the ice, from power programs to quiet pieces that thrive in the Bright-Landry barn. It is where elite skating borrows the intimacy of a theater.
Caitlyn Kukulowicz, then a first-year at Harvard, added to that mood with a “Forever Young” program set to Lily Kershaw’s piano version. The notes sit light, almost fragile, which let her extend lines without rushing the exit. Her clip has circulated too, carried by the same channel and the same audience appetite for work that reads as personal. Different skater, similar spell.
Grace and grit across a short career
Ye-lim Kim’s skating life tracks a familiar twenty-first century pattern. A child watches Yuna Kim crown a golden night in 2010, then laces up and starts the long haul. By her early twenties, Ye-lim is a national champion, a three-time ISU Challenger Series winner, and an Olympian at Beijing 2022. The résumé is tidy, the edges cleaner still.
There is a small biographical wrinkle that historians like to note. Sources list her birthplace as Seoul in the ISU database, while many profiles attach her closely to Gwacheon, where she grew up. Either way, the date is certain. January 23, 2003. The path is certain too. Start in 2010, rise through juniors, join the senior ranks, and carry the flag on the biggest stage.
The end came sooner than fans hoped, which is common in sports that ask a lot from the spine. After injuries that trace back to 2022, Ye-lim announced her retirement in February 2025, citing a severe herniated disk. It was a careful and candid note, and it fit the way she skated. Exact, but open. If you want a closing image, keep that Harvard program in mind. One song, one sheet of ice, and a crowd that fell quiet because the edges told the story for her.