In the three decades since "Deuce Coupe" she has created and dissolved several incarnations of her own company, made pieces for ballet companies and ice skaters, worked in theater, film and television, written books and choreographed and directed on Broadway.
At almost any hour of the day, you'll find bikers, runners, and skaters working up a sweat in the ocean breeze.
But that was a long time ago now: The images of young skaters working at Witt's old home rink betoken ease, freedom, prosperity.
She left her longtime coach at the Detroit Skating Rink and asked two other coaches at that club — Yuka Sato, the 1994 world champion, and Jason Dungjen, a former national champion pairs skater — to work with her.
Don't spend time talking to fellow skaters, or working on moves that aren't in your program, especially riskier ones.
"During visualization, she incorporates all of her senses into the experience," sports psychologist Dr. JoAnn Dahlkoetter wrote in a blog on The Huffington Post about a speed skater she works with.
"What appealed to me as a skater in his work is that he used old decks gage them new life.
"I work with skaters of all countries.
"I think anybody who understands how the body moves can work with skaters," he said by phone from Colorado, where he lives.
But Hamel is hearing about some amateurs starting their own projects, and a French hip-hop choreographer, Sébastien Lefrançois, who is developing work with skaters.
