Ice dancing is different - it is a combination of a sports activity with the grace and poise of dancing. It calls for agility, technical skill, strength and confidence.
What makes Ice dancing different? Well, two things. First of all it is a dancing sport that can win its participants a gold medal in the Olympics – allowing you to pack fitness into grace!
Second, ice dancers are judged on the difficulty and originality of their dance steps, their interpretation of the music, and their timing and unison. Unlike figure skating, ice dancing does not allow movements of strength or technical skill (particularly overhead lifts, jumps, and spins).
Ice dancing as a sport and dance form gained popularity in the 1930s and the first world championships were held in 1950. Ice dancing is similar to pairs figure skating, and competitions consist of three parts: prescribed pattern dances, an original set pattern dance and a free dance, which allows the greatest freedom of expression. The first Olympic ice dancing competition was in 1976. At that time, traditional ballroom dances comprised the core of skaters' programs.
The leading ice dancers in the 1970s were the Soviets Lyudmila Pakhomova and Aleksandr Gorshkov. In the 1980s, the British ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean dominated the sport with dramatic and innovative choreography performed to a variety of musical forms (popular, jazz, classical and so on). They won four consecutive world championships (1981-84) and the gold medal at the 1984 Winter Olympics. Outstanding in the late 1980s and early 1990s were the Russian ice dancers ,Marina Klimova and Sergei Ponomarenko.
Ice dance has a strong tradition in the United Kingdom. Beginning in the 1970s, dance began to be dominated more by teams from the Soviet Union and Russia. In the 1990s, the International Skating Union began to try to restrain the excessive theatricality in ice dancing, first 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 that allows vocal music with lyrics in competition.
