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.

Skating Earthquake!

Wow, there has been quite a change in the skating world... Brian Joubert is NOT skating to the Matrix or James Bond. He's going Beethoven... and looking good. The video clip is from the French Masters which is somewhat of a test event for the French skaters at the beginning of their season. I thought he looked a bit faster and slimmer. He slowed down and had some bobbles at the end but compared to last season, looks like he did some serious skating this summer. He does a really cool scratch spin while holding on to his free leg too.




I guess he's not planning on retiring any time soon and trying new things. He's still a meat and potatoes skater underneath the Beethoven, but I'm glad to see he's making a slight change for this season. It shows some commitment and passion for winning by skating outside of his comfort zone.

Catching Up - ISU JGP Japan, England & Germany

I've been out of the loop on skating events recently. Here's a quick recap of the Junior Grand Prix events over the past few weeks: US Men and ladies have continued to do well taking away a medal in at least one single event each competition. I continue to be interested in this group of juniors Russia has come out with this season. Junior competitors are still growing and maturing, but it seems they have a deep pool of talented skaters to watch.

ISU JGP - SBC Cup - Japan
Men's Podium

1	Andrei ROGOZINE	CAN	188.60	2	1
2	Max AARON	USA	179.82	1	5
3	Abzal RAKIMGALIEV	KAZ	172.28	3	6

Ladies' Podium

1	Risa SHOJI	JPN	149.39	1	1
2	Kiri BAGA	USA	138.70	2	2
3	Kexin ZHANG	CHN	134.08	4	3

Ice Dance Podium

1	Alexandra STEPANOVA / Ivan BUKIN	RUS	130.08	2	1
2	Ekaterina PUSHKASH / Jonathan GUERREIRO	RUS	129.71	1	2
3	Geraldine BOTT / Neil BROWN	FRA	123.65	3	3

ISU JGP - John Curry Memorial - Sheffield, England
Men's Podium:

1	Joshua FARRIS	USA	187.74	1	1
2	Zhan BUSH	RUS	172.80	4	2
3	Liam FIRUS	CAN	166.38	2	3

Ladies' Podium

1	Adelina SOTNIKOVA	RUS	166.70	1	1
2	Yasmin SIRAJ	USA	161.75	2	2
3	Yuki NISHINO	JPN	135.58	3	4

Pairs' Podium

1	Ksenia STOLBOVA / Fedor KLIMOV	RUS	151.64	1	2
2	Narumi TAKAHASHI / Mervin TRAN	JPN	144.69	4	1
3	Natasha PURICH / Raymond SCHULTZ	CAN	126.98	3	4

Ice Dance Podium

1	Ksenia MONKO / Kirill KHALIAVIN	RUS	155.04	1	1
2	Victoria SINITSINA / Ruslan ZHIGANSHIN	RUS	133.86	2	2
3	Nicole ORFORD / Thomas WILLIAMS	CAN	115.66	3	3

ISU JGP - Pokal der Blauen Schwerter - Dresden, Germany
Men's Podium & Artur Dmitriev, Jr.
Thought it's worth including the son of a two-time Olympic champion in the results and to recognize all the good finishes by the Russian junior skaters.

1	Richard DORNBUSH	USA	195.23	1	1
2	Gordei GORSHKOV	RUS	185.84	2	2
3	Ryuichi KIHARA	JPN	177.92	5	3
4	Artur DMITRIEV	RUS	170.75	4	5

Ladies' Podium

1	Elizaveta TUKTAMISHEVA	RUS	172.78	1	1
2	Christina GAO	USA	155.67	2	2
3	Ira VANNUT	BEL	141.87	4	3

Pairs' Podium

1	Wenjing SUI / Cong HAN	CHN	167.13	2	1
2	Narumi TAKAHASHI / Mervin TRAN	JPN	159.38	1	2
3	Anna SILAEVA / Artur MINCHUK	RUS	131.03	3	4

Ice Dance Podium 1 Evgenia KOSIGINA / Nikolai MOROSHKIN RUS 126.92 1 1 2 Marina ANTIPOVA / Artem KUDASHEV RUS 118.80 2 4 3 Charlotte LICHTMAN / Dean COPELY USA 118.21 3 3

Eastern Great Lakes - Good Luck!

Good Luck to all the skaters competing this weekend at regionals, especially those local skaters going to the Eastern Great Lakes in Franklin, TN!

Axels, Loops, and Spins: Junior Grand Prix Austria Rewind

I hope I'm doing this link right to give credit where it's due. I saw the winning dance team at Graz's free dancebto Beetlejuice. I loved this program; it's creative and fun. It greatly builds my anticipation for Davis and White's "Amelie" free dance. I think it will have a similar spirit since they have the same coaching staff. what lovely twiddles this team has; it inspires me for practicing those twiddles.