Figuring Out the Frankendance

I've been curious about the changes to junior and senior ice dance that go into effect this season. Ice dance had three segments of the competition prior to this year; now there are just two segments. The ISU voted to combine the compulsory dance and original dance into a "short dance" for the junior and senior events. This was supposedly done to keep ice dancing in the Olympics as the IOC wants to have shorter events that do not need to be scheduled over a few days in the Olympics. I think this is an odd reason as sports like the decathlon are in the Olympics which consists of 10 events. I personally think ISU made the move to cut costs of hosting events and judges expenses over an extra event. That's just my opinion.

I've been looking up the short dances from the Nebelhorn Trophy, and I must say I appreciate Ice-Dance.com's term "Frankendance" even more. From my understanding, senior competitors are to skate one full pattern of the Golden Waltz as a required element in their short dance. This required element is the "pattern" portion of the short dance while the rest of the elements are skated in the "creative" portion. (The ISU explains the Frankendance rules in communication 1621 if you'd like to provide further insight to my interpretation.)

I think the Golden Waltz was selected as the pattern for seniors this year as it's the most difficult of the compulsory dances. Here's a clip of the Golden Waltz being performed by Belbin & Agosto and Virtue & Moir side by side. The side by side gives a good example of how the compulsory segment could distinguish skaters of various levels by comparing apples to apples with each team doing the same dance to the same music.


Note both couples are following the same steps which make a pattern of steps around the ice. They complete the pattern at least two times around the rink. Note the pattern begins with steps that involve stepping in between each other's feet while rotating. It's also skated to a rather traditional waltz. Waltzes have a count of 3 so in completing the steps with the rhythm you might be saying in to yourself, "And One, Two, Three, AND One, Two, Three..."

Ok, got that? Now check out how the Golden Waltz is inserted into Pechalat & Bourzat's short dance:


Love the music to Yann Tiersen's Amelie, it starts very waltz-y. They started the program with a wonderful twizzle sequence for part of the required elements in the creative portion the program. Did you catch that they started the Golden Waltz pattern half way through at not with the traditional starting point of the pattern as noted in the previous example? It's allowed by the rules, but looking at the protocal, I think it threw off the judges a bit.

Now let's see the Italian team of Cappelini & Lanotte:


The music is not as waltz-y, but it is soft and lilting like most waltzes. They completed the full pattern from the beginning so it was a little easier to catch right? Wasn't her dress fun and fabulous?

One more, here's the team of Zhiganshina & Gazi:


OK, after you got past the creative skirt, what did you think of this short dance? Incredibly fun music, although I would get rather tired of it if I was practicing at their training rink. Also, they completed most of the creative required elements at the beginning of the program and then went into the traditional pattern of the Golden Waltz.

From these examples, I think we'll see a great deal of variety in the short dance which is exciting. Lots of different music styles too; bringing a bit of a Dancing with Stars element into ice dancing. Different music styles, pieces of compulsory patterns, different interpretations, total Frankendance! I think this variety is going to make the judges compare apples to oranges in all segments of the competition. The beauty of the compulsories was in making a segment completely comparing apples to apples by every executing the same dance. In the short dance, all skaters have a specific pattern to execute, but with the different styles and interpretation, I think it may lead to some crazy judging. I'll be interested to see how this develops through out the year.