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Ice dancing is a form of figure skating which draws from the world of ballroom
dancing. It was first competed at the World Figure Skating Championships in
1952 but did not become a Winter Olympic Games medal sport until 1976. As
in pair skating, dancers compete as a couple consisting of a man and a woman.
Ice dance differs from pair skating by severely limiting lifts, requiring
spins to be performed as a team in a dance hold, and by disallowing throws
and jumps. Typically, partners are not supposed to separate by more than two
arm lengths; originally, partners were supposed to be in a dance hold the
entire program. This restriction has been lifted somewhat in modern ice dancing.
Another distinction between ice dance and other disciplines of skating is that dancers must always skate to music that has a definite beat or rhythm. Singles and pair skaters more often skate to the melody and phrasing of their music, rather than its beat, but this is severely penalized in ice dance.
There are three components to an ice dancing competition: the compulsory dances, the original dance ("OD") and the free dance. Compulsory dances, with fixed patterns and steps, draw most strongly from the ballroom tradition. For the original dance, the International Skating Union designates a rhythm or set of rhythms each year that all dancers must perform to, but the competitors choose their own music and choreography. Dancers are free to choose their own rhythms and program themes for the free dance. Since 1998, dancers have been required to include certain elements in their free dances, including step sequences, lifts, dance spins, and multi-rotation turns called twizzles.
Ice dance history
Ice dance has a strong tradition in the United Kingdom. Many of the compulsory
dances which are still competed today were developed by British dancers in
the 1930's, and 12 of the first 16 World Championships in ice dance were won
by British couples. The British team of Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean
famously won the Olympic gold medal in Sarajevo in 1984 with a dramatic free
skate to Ravel's Bolero which earned unanimous 6.0s for presentation.
Beginning in the 1970's, dance began to be dominated more by teams from the Soviet Union and Russia. The Russian style of ice dance typically emphasizes speed and power at the expense of precision. For example, in the compulsory dances, the skaters have been known to make slight alterations in the pattern and timing of the steps that are not strictly correct according to the rulebook, but which make the dance flow better or have more speed over the ice, and hence appear more impressive. Russian ice dancers are also known for theatrical and sometimes bizarre costuming and expression in their dances.
In the 1990's, the International Skating Union began to try to restrain the excessive theatricality in ice dancing, first by attempting to return it to its ballroom roots by adding more restrictions on music and dance holds. Later, amid complaints that ice dance had become too boring, these restrictions were removed and replaced with requirements that dancers include specified technical elements in the original dance and free dance. The effect is that there is now more emphasis on technique and athleticism in the judging, and less on dramatics. While the requirement that dancers skate to music with a definite beat remains, ice dancing is currently the only discipline of figure skating which allows vocal music with lyrics in competition.
Today ice dance remains more popular in Europe than in North America, where it has the reputation among many skating fans of being plagued by judging that is at least incomprehensible and at most completely corrupt. One possible explanation of the only modest success of North American dance teams over the years is that, in the United States and Canada, the singles events are considered the "glamor sports" and are more likely to attract the most talented skaters, whereas the opposite is true in Europe.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.