Skate of Mind

 Ok, we've done jumps, spins and you know-ice dance. Let's look at the freaks who do pairs skating (this is a compliment by the way, these people are to be feared and respected at all times, they could literally die at any time doing these tricks). Also as an aside, I'm going to try and be more gender neutral in my terminology going forward-thanks all! Ok let's get into the required elements for pairs skating! Side by side jumps and Side by side spins The side by side elements, are as you would imagine-just 2 skaters doing the same element individually (but synchronized, to make it harder). That's about as complicated as it gets and levels for jumps are pretty self explanatory. Spins are a little more creative in pairs skating than they used to be...to the detriment in my opinion. I get skaters are going for the harder positions/transitions but it generally makes for poor unison in the new judging system. One thing that sometimes gets interesting is when individuals...

Looks like we finally have the full competitor's list for the competition! Teams are below with some cheeky comments from me (as always). Who are you most excited to see?  Armenia          Ice Dance: Garabedian/Proulx-Senecal These guys are having a great year-their highest ever finish at Euros (13th), and will hope to have a strong showing at the Olympics maybe even a top 10 finish at Worlds later this year? Who knows! Australia          Men: Brendan Kerry          Women: Kailani Craine Austria          Women: Mikutina          Pairs: Ziegler/Kiefer Azerbaijan          Men: Litvintsev          Women: Ryabova Ryabova and Litvintsev are also having strong years-finishing well at Euros. Side note, did you know he once participated in something called "Open Ice Mall Cup"...they couldn't think of a better name I g...

So far we've covered jumps and lifts.  Casual fans may know ice dance as "The one where they don't jump at all, it's lame." They're not wrong about the jumping but lame it is not. It's certainly not something you can watch and understand the first time out, it's an acquired taste like wine or coffee. And yes I love both and so do you so let's get into it. Dance patterns Dance patterns are probably the closest thing to compulsory figures or school figures that still exists in today's skating. And to talk about this adequately we have to go back in time a bit.  So in the old 6.0 days of the sport, ice dance was a 4-phase competition whereas single skating and pairs is 2 phases (short program and free skate). So it was a lot. The first 2 phases were called the compulsory dances. These were 2 dances, that were named after and patterned on ballroom dances. So in a ye olde competition you might see a waltz compulsory dance (CD) and a paso doble CD. T...

 And we're back with some more fun silliness! Let's peep the fits:   Weaver and Poje skating to a Paso Doble rhythm dance in these FIRE outfits. It really says Paso and they both look great, kudos.  Davis and White here in their Indian "Bollywood" original dance. Honestly big ups to them for doing this program, they got authentic Indian clothes and altered them to work for this program-they also consulted with dancers who knew Indian styles of dance. It was all very well done. Also this COLOR on her? Perfection.  Shib sibs doing their Michael Jackson free dance in these outfits. One thing that I find not many teams do well, is to make the outfits gel together without making them either the exact same, or putting the man in just like a plain shirt. This is a great example of costumes that compliment each other without being carbon copies.  Davis and White again in their Scheherazade Free dance. She also wore the same dress in a lavender color for most of the comp...

So we've covered the jumps-let's move on to spins. This one will be a little harder since, while yes there are general groups/kinds of spins, skaters are encouraged to innovate with positions of free legs, arms, and combinations. In fact under the current point system, it would be incredibly rare to see a layback spin on its own without any kind of change of position or variation. Which is honestly kind of a shame! A layback spin, done perfectly used to be one of the hallmark moves in figure skating-the one they put on magazine covers and what-not. Why do skaters change position so much? The points darling, the points! By changing position, Gumby-ing yourself around etc. a skater can increase the level of difficulty and thereby the base value awarded. In jumps we didn't have to talk about this, because jumps essentially tell you their difficulty level, i.e. a single axel would be (sort of) a level 1 and get a corresponding base value. Well for spins it's a little more s...