Did You Know...Ice Dancing Edition
American ice dancers Madison Hubbell and Zach Donohue at the 2012 World Freestyle Skating Championship. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
The same question is echoed across the internet every four years: what exactly is the difference between figure skating and ice dancing? As Olympic sports, both require an incredible amount of agility and strength, but they are also beautiful and compelling artforms.
Essentially, ice dancing is similar to pairs figure skating, but certain moves are prohibited, including jumps and particular lifts. In ice dancing, the emphasis is on footwork and body movements, not axels and lutzes.
The National Endowment for the Arts has supported projects that incorporate both figure skating and ice dancing in years past. Brownbody in Vadnais Heights, Minnesota, has combined modern dance with figure skating for their NEA-supported performance, “Tracing Sacred Steps,” which explores the history of Black social dances, such as Ring Shout. Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center commissioned an ice dance piece from Brownbody and ice dance company Le Patin Libre in another NEA-supported project.
To celebrate the Olympics and Team USA’s recent bronze medal in ice dance for partners Madison Hubbell and Zach Donohue, we thought we’d share some additional fun facts about the sport! If you’re an ice dancing fan, let us know at @NEAarts on Twitter.
Did you know…ice skating has existed since approximately 3000 B.C. when Indigenous Scandinavians began using animal bones to sail across ice? It took another few thousand years before figure skating as we know it today was invented. It wasn’t until the 1860s that American ballet dancer Jackson Haines brought his moves to the ice.
Did you know…the first Olympic figure skating event was in 1908 at the London Summer Games? It was moved to the Winter Olympic Games during its inaugural year, 1924, in Chamonix, France. Ice dancing didn’t become an Olympic sport until the 1976 games in Innsbruck, Austria.
Did you know…there are two segments of ice dance competition: the rhythm dance and the free dance? For the rhythm dance, the International Skating Union introduces a theme each season, and in 2022, it was street dance.
"Father of Figure Skating" Jackson Haines. Photo via Library of Congress.
Did you know…historically, ice dancing has drawn heavily from ballroom dancing? Back in the day, pairs would skate waltzes and other social dances, keeping their skates largely on the ice, but by the 1980s, the sport began to move away from strictly ballroom towards other styles.
Did you know…it was only during the 2021/22 season that women ice dancers were allowed to wear pants during free dance? In prior years, they could only wear pants during rhythmic dance.
Did you know…one of the iconic moves in ice dance are twizzles? No, not the candy. Twizzles involve dancers turning one foot, rotating quickly, while the other foot is off the ice. Both partners perform the move side by side. Think pirouette!
