Ice dancing is a discipline 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 having different requirements for 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, though this restriction has been lifted somewhat in modern ice dancing.
Another distinction between ice dance and other disciplines of skating is the usage of music in the performances; in ice dancing, 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; this is severely penalized in ice dance.
In some non-ISU competitions, solo dancers may also compete.
Read more about Ice Dancing: Competition Components, Ice Dance History, Music, Clothing, and Skates, Historical Results
Famous quotes containing the words ice and/or dancing:
“A young person is a person with nothing to learn
One who already knows that ice does not chill and fire does not burn . . .
It knows it can spend six hours in the sun on its first
day at the beach without ending up a skinless beet,
And it knows it can walk barefoot through the barn
without running a nail in its feet. . . .
Meanwhile psychologists grow rich
Writing that the young are ones’ should not
undermine the self-confidence of which.”
—Ogden Nash (1902–1971)
“My Mama has made bread
and Grampaw has come
and everybody is drunk
and dancing in the kitchen”
—Lucille Clifton (b. 1936)