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:
““The room’s very hot, with all this crowd,” the Professor said to Sylvie. “I wonder why they don’t put some lumps of ice in the grate? You fill it with lumps of coal in the winter, you know, and you sit round it and enjoy the warmth. How jolly it would be to fill it now with lumps of ice, and sit round it and enjoy the coolth!””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“I say to you: we must still have chaos within us to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say to you: you still have chaos within you.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)