Myths and Legends of Ice Dance | Golden Skate

Myths and Legends of Ice Dance

puremagic

-
Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 14, 2016
I suggest to discuss here the myths and legends about Ice Dance which you read here on this forum and/or in internet. I have just two. There may be more, so let's tell the world the truth.

1) Almost constantly I see how about Patrick or my lovely girl Nastya Gubanova people say, "Oh, sad, but they could try in the ice dance. They have ice dance's skating skills." What the? You're always repeating this nonsense. Do you really see at least five ice dance couples with the same skating skills as (in men) Patrick and (in ladies) as Kostner, Sotnikova, Gubanova? Not even close! 80-90% ice dancers have average skating skills, maybe even worse. So why are you saying this? Why are you reapeating this? By skating I mean their glide on the ice. I saw a bit close skating only from Annabel Morozov. (but when she was a single skater)

So myth number #1: Almost all ice dancers have beautiful skating skills. - I say it's wrong! Wrong! Not even 80%!

2) About deep edging. Or how it's correctly called? I noticed them in the last year. This year. I've never seen such depth before. Just look. Do you have the similar examples from other ice dance couples or even better? I wish there will be more such elements with more duration. It's a joy to watch.

Myth number #2: Arina USHAKOVA / Maxim NEKRASOV has the deepest edging in the world. - I have not seen other couples with such depth, but I just could have missed that.

(Disclaimer: I know nothing about ice dance, i just judging by what I see. So feel free to laugh at me)

losing hope,
lord puremagic
 

all that

Final Flight
Joined
May 4, 2007
If you know nothing about ice dance, then how can you determine if something is s myth or not?
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
I, too, know nothing about ice dance.:)

But I would be surprised if "Myth #1" is really a myth. Ice dancing is all about edging, stepping and flow. To be a top ice dancer you must excel in those areas, while to be a top singles skater the main skill you need is jumping.

To me, it seems that when someone says (of a singles skater), "oh, she should try ice dance," the poster means that the skater has lost her jumps.
 

NanaPat

Record Breaker
Joined
Oct 25, 2014
Country
Canada
To me, it seems that when someone says (of a singles skater), "oh, she should try ice dance," the poster means that the skater has lost her jumps.

Sometimes, but not always. Sometimes it's a compliment to their skating skills.
 

penguin

On the Ice
Joined
Mar 31, 2012
So myth number #1: Almost all ice dancers have beautiful skating skills. - I say it's wrong! Wrong! Not even 80%!

I think this is false logic. The generally accepted statement isn't "Every ice dancer has better skating skills than every freestyle skater." It's more along the lines of, "In order to be a good ice dancer, you must work on your skating skills much more than you would to be a good freestyle skater." Or maybe also "In ice dancing, beautiful skating skills are much more important (earns more points and is a bigger part of the scoring) than in freestyle skating."

So if you took the same skater and put them in ice dance or in freestyle skating, they would need to work much harder at skating skills in ice dance.

But also, I do think ice dancers as a whole have better skating skills than freestylers. (You have to compare at similar levels, it's not fair to compare a mediocre ice dancer to a top singles skater like Patrick Chan.)
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
One thing that ice dancers have to do is to be on exactly the right edge at exactly the right beat of the music. Plus, this applies to both partners simultaneously..
 

gmyers

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 6, 2010
How many times in history has one part of a major successful even legendary ice dance team been accused of not being able to skate at all? Many times!!

Exhibit A is the skater Margaglio

Right now at this moment you have the skaters Stepanova and people love to say Chock.
 

penguin

On the Ice
Joined
Mar 31, 2012
How many times in history has one part of a major successful even legendary ice dance team been accused of not being able to skate at all? Many times!!

Exhibit A is the skater Margaglio

Right now at this moment you have the skaters Stepanova and people love to say Chock.

I think it's just because it's so noticeable when one half of the partnership is so much better than the other. If both were lesser skaters, I don't think you'd get a lot of "They can't skate at all" comments, because they'd be lower in the standings. But when one partner is great, their level becomes the standard, and the lesser partner will be held to the higher standard (rather than the better skater being held to the lower standard).

It does seem really exaggerated to say that Stepanova and Chock are bad ice dancers, but mostly I see "Their partners deserve better" rather than "They can't skate at all." (Although in Chock's case, I think she more than makes up for it with her performance ability. Plus she's gotten way better.)
 

Seren

Wakabond Forever
Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 21, 2014
I know next to nothing about ice dance (actually, I know three things: it looks really hard, it's really beautiful, and the Shibutanis are perfection). That said, my impression as a non-knowledgeable fan is that the elements ice dancers have to do are really difficult- it stands to reason you would need strong skating skills to accomplish them.

I think it's a little overreaching to claim 80% of ice dance teams don't have beautiful skating skills. There are some 60+ year old ice dancers in my area and they have beautiful skating skills- they aren't elite but I'm still impressed. What you are seeing is a spectrum. Obviously skaters like Virtue/Moir have top tier skills, that doesn't mean the lesser placing skaters don't have admirable skills too.
 

Alex D

Record Breaker
Joined
Sep 23, 2013
As a non dancer, you are still an artist and athlete, so you will posess a certain talent to perform on blades. If you now have fun dancing and some musicality, then ice dance might indeed come as a second chance. That being said, ice dance is a team sport, so that you still need a partner, who does not only have the same abilities for dance like you, but also a mutual understanding of where each other is on ice. Latter, I think is what most dance teams struggle with, the harmony and equality on ice.

In singles you only have to worry about yourself, which makes it much easier in that regard.
 

TontoK

Hot Tonto
Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 28, 2013
Country
United-States
I don't know if it's a myth, but I think it's a commonly held perception...

That ice dance is the "easiest" of the disciplines.

I don't think that's true at all.

It must be very difficult to execute those complicated steps in unison and at high speeds with expression and line and attentiveness to music.
 

andromache

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 23, 2014
I think it is surprising that in many top teams, the "by far the better skater" is the man with the woman being the weak link (Papadakis/Cizeron, Stepanova/Bukin, Chock/Bates, Gilles/Poirier, Hawayek/Baker). Just from a logical perspective, you figure there are probably more women into ice dance than men (since it's viewed as being very feminine), and if men are scarcer, they don't have to be as a good to get a good partner. But instead the pattern seems to be great men "settling" for lesser-skilled women partners.
 

VIETgrlTerifa

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
In Hubbell/Donohue's Reddit Ask Me Anything, they said with ice dance imagine having to do all the difficulty while in a three-legged race. I'd imagine Patrick Chan and Carolina Kostner wouldn't be able to show off their SS as much as they could if they were in ice dance and had to be in almost constant contact with their partner and be in time with them. Kurt Browning did a program to "Nyah" once where it was just footwork and after he performed it a few times he said he'd never make fun of ice dancers again, and Browning was known for his footwork.

I think that really got me to quickly understand the difficulty in ice dance. I also think the ISU wants ice dance to conform with the other 3 disciplines in making it more objective and easier to judge via itemized elements with stringent requirements of what's allowed and what's not allowed and all of those elements taking up so much space in the SD and FD that there's little freedom to actually dance and link the elements in a way that I bet many of the teams wish they could. Like with the hip hop and probably Latin SDs now, so many people complained but I think the requirements of the SD sort of set the teams up to fail. Also, with the callers playing a much bigger role in determining results now more than ever, I think that makes a lot of teams a bit more hesitant because they're concentrating on making sure all of their turns and steps are done correctly and obviously correctly for the panel. That's why when a team looks like they're not doing elements when they actually are because it looks so creative and beautiful and like a cohesive whole rather than a list of elements, people take notice (aka Papadakis/Cizeron and Gilles/Poirier at times).
 

Ic3Rabbit

Former Elite, now Pro. ⛸️
Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 9, 2017
Country
Olympics
I don't know if it's a myth, but I think it's a commonly held perception...

That ice dance is the "easiest" of the disciplines.

I don't think that's true at all.

It must be very difficult to execute those complicated steps in unison and at high speeds with expression and line and attentiveness to music.

Ice Dance is the most difficult of the disciplines.
 

Ender

Match Penalty
Joined
May 17, 2017
I think it is surprising that in many top teams, the "by far the better skater" is the man with the woman being the weak link (Papadakis/Cizeron, Stepanova/Bukin, Chock/Bates, Gilles/Poirier, Hawayek/Baker). Just from a logical perspective, you figure there are probably more women into ice dance than men (since it's viewed as being very feminine), and if men are scarcer, they don't have to be as a good to get a good partner. But instead the pattern seems to be great men "settling" for lesser-skilled women partners.
We haven't seen very good ladies in ice dance with great basics for a while.
 

Snow63

Pray one day we'll open our eyes.
Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 26, 2014
If step sequences of most single skaters were judged by ice dance standarts they most likely wouldn't receive higher than level 1 for them. That says it all.
 

gkelly

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
My ice dance coach has been very picky lately about examining my tracings and calling out double tracking, scraped turns, etc., looking for precision much closer to school figures than to freestyle or even Moves in the Field testing.


At lower levels, I think we often see the boy being a better skater than the girl because the boys are often several years older, necessary to be strong enough to lift the girls. So they would have several more years of body awareness -- and often of skating experience as well.

For teams that get together at junior or senior level when they're already full grown or close to it, age difference is less important. But the lifts get harder, so you're more likely to see good female skaters who grew bigger unable to find partners than good male skaters who remained small. The latter can usually find a girl of an appropriate size to partner even if she's much younger or otherwise less experienced.

If lifts were less important, that would probably be less true.
 

VIETgrlTerifa

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
We haven't seen very good ladies in ice dance with great basics for a while.

Not even Madison Hubbell, Maia Shibutani, Tessa Virtue, Elena Ilinykh, among a few others? Even the ones that used to be considered "weak" have grown to be very strong ice dancers with great skating skills in their own right (often times they are considered weak in comparison to their partner not that they're Margaglio-level), such as Kaetlyn Weaver.

I also think there's a lot more to skating skills than solely looking at depth of edge, though a really deep and held edge is a thing of beauty and awe.
 
Top