This is a procrastination post: Best Ice Dance Programs EVER*
Prompted by a prolonged Twitter conversation with mardia about ice dance at the NHK Trophy (... okay, and a lot of talk of how Meryl Davis is a GODDESS) and a pointed suggestion from meretricula (I quote: "I am on a bus right now but you should put together an LJ post of your favorite ice dance routines, I wanna watch!"), I hereby present:
1. "Bolero", Jayne Torvill & Christopher Dean, 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo
This program is still a point of British national pride, and it is still quite literally the "gold standard" of ice dance, even though ice dance has changed radically in the past 30 years. (THIRTY YEARS WTF.) I actually saw this for the first time in the 1993-4 season, and it was still flaweless then. Learn it. Love it. If you are a skater in the here and now, do not fucking try to skate to "Bolero" because it will do you no favors. (Yes, they have done this. The music is cursed. You cannot do better than Torvill & Dean, people, so please stop trying.)
2. "Bollywood Original Dance", Meryl Davis & Charlie White, 2009 Grand Prix Final
This performance was actually better than their medal-winning Olympic version (Charlie and twizzles have a love/hate relationship, okay), but this program was a much-needed breath of fresh air for the stuffy world of ice dance - there's only so many tangos and polkas you can take before you die of boredom, you know? In addition to the awesome music and fabulous costumes (ahem, Domnina & Shabalin, this is how you do it!), the details of the choreography here are unbelievable (check the hand positions!) and the lifts basically just show off how ridiculously strong Charlie White is. (It's okay to envy Tanith Belbin. It really is.)
3. Waltz/March Original Dance, Albena Denkova & Maxim Staviski, 2003 World Championships
(Embedding is disabled for the WC version of this, but you can watch it here. This is from 2003 Euros.)
Denkova and Staviski are, in my opinion, the most under-appreciated ice dancers of the past fifteen years. (Largely because they represented a country, Bulgaria, with a miniscule amount of political power in the waning years of the Russian stranglehold on ice dance.) Maxim has some of the loveliest lines you will see on a male skater, ever - it's rare for the man to be the one who draws the attention, but when you see him skate, you'll understand. This program is, almost a decade later, still my favorite original dance of all time. The baroque music and costuming are only the icing on a technically delicious cake: not only are their edges and footwork fucking masterful, and their poses (check that lift!) ballerina-in-a-box beautiful, they make use of the stupidly difficult but unabashedly awesome technique of mirror skating on their first straight-line footwork sequence. It's rare for a reason (it is HARD AS FUCK) but this is one of the finest examples in the history of ice dance, and you should love and cherish it with your entire soul.
4. "Flamenco Original Dance", Marina Anissina & Gwendal Peizerat, 2002 Olympics
(The Olympics version isn't embeddable, but you can watch it here.
So, I have been a figure skater, and I have been a flamenco dancer. Both hardcore, and for large chunks of my life. As a result, I hate 99.9% of all attempts to do flamenco on ice, because it inevitably ends up being a shitshow that embarrasses the name of flamenco and the name of skating. But I actually love this program, and not just because Marina Anissina is one fierce HBIC! They do a spectacular job of translating actual flamenco movements to the ice, and Marina manages it an ankle-length ruffled skirt in skates. (I object to the inclusion of Argentine tango on aesthetic and cultural grounds, but they didn't have a choice back in the day...) Also, I highly recommend checking out some of their free dances if you like the occasional genderswappy thing, because their most notable "trick" was what's called a "reverse" lift - ain't nothing like a 5'4 Russian lady hoisting her giant partner over her hip like a (graceful) sack of potatoes.
5. "Scottish Original Dance", Sinead & John Kerr, 2008 World Championships
The Kerrs are not the most beautiful ice dancers to have walked the earth (see: Davis & White), but this program is bloody brilliant. I mean, John is wearing a freaking kilt and they have some wicked/terrifying lifts. Plus, you know, translating a highly non-fluid dance form to the ice.
6. Bach Free Dance, Marina Klimova & Sergei Ponamarenko, 1992 Olympics
These two were some of the greatest ice dancers of the 80s and early 90s, and this program is a masterpiece of technical difficulty and artistic expression - but also very typical of the era in the music (classical) and costuming (... shiny bodysuits and winged sleeves) choices, so it feels very dated. It's still marvellous old-school dance, though.
7. "Rock Around The Clock" Free Dance, Oksana Grishuk & Evgeni Platov, 1994 Olympics
Oksana Grishuk reigned as HBIC of ice dance for nearly a decade, and she single-handedly (... okay, with a little help from Sasha Zhulin) provided the skating world with a good 75% of its gossip and drama for most of the 90s. But she was also a fucking force of nature on the ice, and this program won her an Olympic gold. (I love Evgeni Platov a LOT, but let's face it, nobody is looking at him when she's around.)
8. "Adagio of the 21st Century", Shae-Lynn Bourne & Victor Kraatz, 2003 Canadian Championships
Also under-appreciated: Bourne & Kraatz, affectionately known as "Crash & Burn" in the skating world. They had amazing avant-garde style and some frankly astonishing moves but an unfortunate tendency to make stupid mistakes. This program has lots of the former but none of the latter, and it is genius on ice.
9. "Quelque Cris" Free Dance, Margarita Drobiazko & Povilas Vanagas, 2001 Skate America
Another shamefully underappreciated team (this is pretty much universally agreed-upon), these two knew how to bring the over-the-top drama and fabulous edges. This was probably their best season, and they spent it losing to Chait & Sakhnovsky.
10. Great Expectations Free Dance, Jamie Silverstein & Justin Pekarek, 2000 US Championships
Jamie and Justin were Marlie before Marlie were Marlie, if you know what I mean. They were going to be the next greatest thing in American ice dance - they briefly WERE the next greatest thing, but Jamie left skating and then the reign of Belbin & Agosto began. This is one of their only senior-level programs, and it is a true treasure: just watch their LEGIT footwork and beautiful edges, and marvel at their lifts, and weep for the lost generation of American ice dance.
... so apparently I have a lot of Opinions about ice dance? And that coming from a discipline I thought I ignored during my skating years. No, Virtue & Moir aren't on the list, but I figure they (and most Davis & White programs) are already known to y'all, being recent and stuff. Also I'm still salty about Vancouver, whatevs. Hopefully, dear reader, you have enjoyed at least some of these gems, and perhaps learned a little something about the marvellous art of ice dance. (Namely, that it is fucking fierce.)
* where "top ten" and "ever", of course, are highly subjective and more than a little arbitrary; I am known to like good music and gimmicks
** there were some years when ice dance was kinda boring and I was too busy trying/failing to become Sasha Cohen to watch pairs and dance
1. "Bolero", Jayne Torvill & Christopher Dean, 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo
Click to viewThis program is still a point of British national pride, and it is still quite literally the "gold standard" of ice dance, even though ice dance has changed radically in the past 30 years. (THIRTY YEARS WTF.) I actually saw this for the first time in the 1993-4 season, and it was still flaweless then. Learn it. Love it. If you are a skater in the here and now, do not fucking try to skate to "Bolero" because it will do you no favors. (Yes, they have done this. The music is cursed. You cannot do better than Torvill & Dean, people, so please stop trying.)
2. "Bollywood Original Dance", Meryl Davis & Charlie White, 2009 Grand Prix Final
This performance was actually better than their medal-winning Olympic version (Charlie and twizzles have a love/hate relationship, okay), but this program was a much-needed breath of fresh air for the stuffy world of ice dance - there's only so many tangos and polkas you can take before you die of boredom, you know? In addition to the awesome music and fabulous costumes (ahem, Domnina & Shabalin, this is how you do it!), the details of the choreography here are unbelievable (check the hand positions!) and the lifts basically just show off how ridiculously strong Charlie White is. (It's okay to envy Tanith Belbin. It really is.)
3. Waltz/March Original Dance, Albena Denkova & Maxim Staviski, 2003 World Championships
(Embedding is disabled for the WC version of this, but you can watch it here. This is from 2003 Euros.)
Denkova and Staviski are, in my opinion, the most under-appreciated ice dancers of the past fifteen years. (Largely because they represented a country, Bulgaria, with a miniscule amount of political power in the waning years of the Russian stranglehold on ice dance.) Maxim has some of the loveliest lines you will see on a male skater, ever - it's rare for the man to be the one who draws the attention, but when you see him skate, you'll understand. This program is, almost a decade later, still my favorite original dance of all time. The baroque music and costuming are only the icing on a technically delicious cake: not only are their edges and footwork fucking masterful, and their poses (check that lift!) ballerina-in-a-box beautiful, they make use of the stupidly difficult but unabashedly awesome technique of mirror skating on their first straight-line footwork sequence. It's rare for a reason (it is HARD AS FUCK) but this is one of the finest examples in the history of ice dance, and you should love and cherish it with your entire soul.
4. "Flamenco Original Dance", Marina Anissina & Gwendal Peizerat, 2002 Olympics
(The Olympics version isn't embeddable, but you can watch it here.
So, I have been a figure skater, and I have been a flamenco dancer. Both hardcore, and for large chunks of my life. As a result, I hate 99.9% of all attempts to do flamenco on ice, because it inevitably ends up being a shitshow that embarrasses the name of flamenco and the name of skating. But I actually love this program, and not just because Marina Anissina is one fierce HBIC! They do a spectacular job of translating actual flamenco movements to the ice, and Marina manages it an ankle-length ruffled skirt in skates. (I object to the inclusion of Argentine tango on aesthetic and cultural grounds, but they didn't have a choice back in the day...) Also, I highly recommend checking out some of their free dances if you like the occasional genderswappy thing, because their most notable "trick" was what's called a "reverse" lift - ain't nothing like a 5'4 Russian lady hoisting her giant partner over her hip like a (graceful) sack of potatoes.
5. "Scottish Original Dance", Sinead & John Kerr, 2008 World Championships
The Kerrs are not the most beautiful ice dancers to have walked the earth (see: Davis & White), but this program is bloody brilliant. I mean, John is wearing a freaking kilt and they have some wicked/terrifying lifts. Plus, you know, translating a highly non-fluid dance form to the ice.
6. Bach Free Dance, Marina Klimova & Sergei Ponamarenko, 1992 Olympics
These two were some of the greatest ice dancers of the 80s and early 90s, and this program is a masterpiece of technical difficulty and artistic expression - but also very typical of the era in the music (classical) and costuming (... shiny bodysuits and winged sleeves) choices, so it feels very dated. It's still marvellous old-school dance, though.
7. "Rock Around The Clock" Free Dance, Oksana Grishuk & Evgeni Platov, 1994 Olympics
Oksana Grishuk reigned as HBIC of ice dance for nearly a decade, and she single-handedly (... okay, with a little help from Sasha Zhulin) provided the skating world with a good 75% of its gossip and drama for most of the 90s. But she was also a fucking force of nature on the ice, and this program won her an Olympic gold. (I love Evgeni Platov a LOT, but let's face it, nobody is looking at him when she's around.)
8. "Adagio of the 21st Century", Shae-Lynn Bourne & Victor Kraatz, 2003 Canadian Championships
Also under-appreciated: Bourne & Kraatz, affectionately known as "Crash & Burn" in the skating world. They had amazing avant-garde style and some frankly astonishing moves but an unfortunate tendency to make stupid mistakes. This program has lots of the former but none of the latter, and it is genius on ice.
9. "Quelque Cris" Free Dance, Margarita Drobiazko & Povilas Vanagas, 2001 Skate America
Another shamefully underappreciated team (this is pretty much universally agreed-upon), these two knew how to bring the over-the-top drama and fabulous edges. This was probably their best season, and they spent it losing to Chait & Sakhnovsky.
10. Great Expectations Free Dance, Jamie Silverstein & Justin Pekarek, 2000 US Championships
Jamie and Justin were Marlie before Marlie were Marlie, if you know what I mean. They were going to be the next greatest thing in American ice dance - they briefly WERE the next greatest thing, but Jamie left skating and then the reign of Belbin & Agosto began. This is one of their only senior-level programs, and it is a true treasure: just watch their LEGIT footwork and beautiful edges, and marvel at their lifts, and weep for the lost generation of American ice dance.
... so apparently I have a lot of Opinions about ice dance? And that coming from a discipline I thought I ignored during my skating years. No, Virtue & Moir aren't on the list, but I figure they (and most Davis & White programs) are already known to y'all, being recent and stuff. Also I'm still salty about Vancouver, whatevs. Hopefully, dear reader, you have enjoyed at least some of these gems, and perhaps learned a little something about the marvellous art of ice dance. (Namely, that it is fucking fierce.)
* where "top ten" and "ever", of course, are highly subjective and more than a little arbitrary; I am known to like good music and gimmicks
** there were some years when ice dance was kinda boring and I was too busy trying/failing to become Sasha Cohen to watch pairs and dance