To resume a lesson as though several months hadn't passed: the 2/4 tempo can be found in more than one musical -- and dance -- genre. And one utilized by a few teams this season is that associated more with a honkytonk than Oktoberfest.
This history of Country-Western dance in fact emphasizes the polka heritage of country dance, traceable to the Central European heritage of many settlers in Western areas such as Texas. This glossary gives a little more useful detail on the actual movements of today's dance and its substyles. Naturally, the Yankee Polka step requirements proscribe any team from fully adapting the rhythmic requirements to another genre; every dance will share the pattern and carry a little polka flavor. But careful music selection and cohesive choreography can greatly minimize the disruption potentially offered by the compulsory.
Lynn Kriengkrairut and Logan Giulietti-Schmitt made a particular effort to incorporate floor stylings -- check out the skips in the program's first four seconds:
Though the overall performance was one of their weaker of the season -- better outings from Skate America and the U.S. International Figure Skating Classic are not readily available -- for choreographic purposes it will do well enough. The first minute takes some two-step inspiration, while the changes of hold reflect a little taste of the shuffle:
For another taste of CW dance on the floor, a number of instructional videos are available, but also miss a bit of the flavor. This lesson is rather less formal, but it might be among the most authentic tastes of contemporary CW dance on YouTube:
Akin to that informality, Nicole Orford and Thomas Williams's take on CW is a little grittier in style than Kriengkrairut and Giulietti-Schmitt's, taking on a bit of the stomping rodeo feel reflective of William's native Calgary:
The transition movement from 2:17-2:22 works effectively as a free-feeling break -- it's choreography, but it appears more like an incidental element. They sell it, they're loose, and they've got the right spirit.
On a final note, one might recall that a few top teams took a CW approach to 2009-10's folk dance OD; worth observing is the significant differences in pieces like Evan Bates and Emily Samuelson's Dixie Chicks medley and Pechalat and Bourzat's own take from the above short dances. While both programs have an obvious CW feel, they're also arguably a bit more open in movement and theatrical in style. The Yankee Polka and rhythmic requirements may have forced certain choreography, but at the same time seem to have had the intriguing effect of establishing programs that bear a slightly closer resemblance to their floor forebears.
In one of this season's less surprising developments, an approximate 98% of teams have shown or indicated plans to present the Yankee Polka pattern in any form but its most obvious. This is, all things considered, not an insensible strategy, despite the disappointment it may mean for devoted lovers of traditional polka.
Thus far, teams are generally opting instead for a diverse but necessarily small pool of variations on the required 2/4 tempo and accompanying permitted rhythm (waltz, march, or more polka). Traditional ballroom, Country-Western, classic musical, and French themes are so far the most popular, and will be explored here in weeks to come, as enough videos of these programs in competition actually become available. For the moment, let's focus on the polka -- Yankee and floor -- itself.
The Yankee Polka pattern is a bit of an outlier for having originated in the U.S., and as (comparatively) recently as 1969, in an apparently polka-friendly period in American culture. As with the blues, Ice-Dance.com provides an excellent reference page outlining the pattern's steps and technical requirements. But also of note is what else separates the Yankee Polka from a pattern like blues or last year's rhumba, and that's a sense of continuity with its source material.
Analyzing a stepchart from the polka isn't especially instructive on a technical level, but knowing what most characterizes the style -- the hop or half-step -- is key. A little historical background on this dance is also useful, and this not-historical video gives some idea of how the dance style initially fit within a ballroom context:
Today the style is considered far more as a cultural dance, with Polish and German styles among other variants. This instruction video, however, strips it down to pure technique, which may be more helpful here:
The ISU's Yankee Polka guidelines assert that The character of the dance is achieved through the interesting use of one beat edges and very short steps skated on the "and" between counts. In this well-skated and rather unusual take from Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder, we can see two "very short steps" in the first two steps of the compulsory dance proper (beginning at 0:30), followed by a three-turn recalling the dance's contrasting longer steps:
Of course, of almost as great importance to a properly-rendered on-ice polka is the dance's character. The steps give an indication, but the attitude needs to be more full-bodied: the polka and Yankee Polka are sprightly, happy, upbeat dances. A skater may seek out darker-edged 2/4 musical selection, and may be successful in such a search -- but a mournful or angry performance seems unlikely, if not costly. The tempo lends itself to a bouncy character; the required steps reinforce the tempo; the full dance cannot clash in spirit without a team's anticipating some confused feedback.
To conclude, I'll leave you with an überconventional -- and quite appropriately bouncy -- take from former German champions Kati Winkler and René Lohse as a balance for all those untraditional variations on the polka to come,:
The most popular pairing of all for a blues short dance has been, probably unsurprisingly, swing. A few teams, like Americans Madeline Heritage and Nathaniel Fast, have opted to tackle a full blues program; a few others, as discussed last week, are daring the hip-hop option. But swing provides, frankly, the easiest opportunity for a team to showcase their ability to handle multiple tempos and swift mood shifts -- and may also simply be more fun to train daily.
Swing dance saw a popular resurgence in the late '90s, in a story with which many are already familiar involving things like Gap commercials, the Brian Setzer Orchestra, and indie films featuring Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau. Today the major styles primarily competed are West Coast Swing, East Coast Swing, and Lindy Hop.
The formalized East Coast Swing and frequently improvisational West Coast Swing bear very little affinity to the swing of ice dance, which generally roots itself in a Big Band-era style. The traditional Lindy Hop is its closet floor companion; The Lindy Circle offers a nice overview of Lindy Hop's origin, as well as swing's development from that original style. Wikipedia, too, provides a cursory but useful guide to Lindy Hop and swing moves. And while many vintage swing videos are available, this montage gives a pretty good glimpse of a variety of moves (albeit missing the component of original accompanying music):
Swing in ice dance was last seen in a big way in the 2008-09 season, with an original dance that called for rhythms and dances of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. One especially spirited senior OD came from Sinead and John Kerr, whose rhythms, interestingly, were officially classified quite specifically as West Coast Swing and Lindy Hop:
For the juniors, who faced the same OD requirement, Maia and Alex Shibutani put out a fun Big Band program:
The advantage that these prior teams had, of course, was the absence of a requisite pattern and mandated rhythm; while they still choose to showcase a variety of rhythms, they're at greater liberty to experiment with movement (within, of course, the ordinary restraints). On the other hand, such restriction as faced by today's teams makes the accomplishment of the more successful SDs all the more impressive. Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France, champions at JGP Courchevel, have one of the stronger swing SDs this season, using The Brian Setzer Orchestra's "The Dirty Boogie" for that segment. Note the nice aerial movement from Papadakis, as well as some fairly authentic liftwork:
When the ISU selected hip-hop as one of three acceptable rhythms for this year's blues-based junior short dance, the reaction in the skating media -- and fan media -- was typically thus:
which provides some perspective on the context into which this genre was so shockingly thrust.
After making their pronouncement, the ISU provided its skaters with a handbook on hip-hop rhythm, including a list of helpful examples of "new style hip-hop": four selections from the American and British versions of So You Think You Can Dance. The routines are well-performed, and most are based in the lyrical hip-hop style -- SYTYCD US's usual approach to hip-hop. But in its perusal of the popular dance program's offerings, the ISU opted not to include something more intensely beat-based (as demonstrated often on the Canadian series), or more in the vein of this well-known piece:
Junior performers ranging in age from 13 to 21, blades and ice, and an audience and judging panel including many parties not traditionally predominant in hip-hop's fanbase -- these present some very real limitations on the diversity of work today's teams can present.
And yet the genre's addition to the line-up this year does mark a fairly radical shift in its way for the ISU. Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto's 2007-08 exhibition to Justin Timberlake's "Sexy Back" and "My Love" is, to date, one of the few readily locatable examples of hip-hop (in its broadest sense) in ice dance:
After unveiling the program at the 2007 Marshall's Showcase, the team shared their desire for hip-hop's recognition and acceptance in the sport. What's not touched upon, however, are the technical elements that may additionally have limited its presence -- and by which even Tanith and Ben were not unaffected.
Surprisingly, the best overview of historical and modern hip-hop comes from Wikipedia, which also offers video links to illustrate each general style. While hip-hop is really a blanket name for an extensive variety of subgenres, one of its primary components is an element of improvisation -- though this is not true for the studio-based hip-hop also popular today, and it's this latter with which ice dance must by necessity be compared. Within the realm of choreographed commercial hip-hop, however, certain rules still apply. From our Wiki entry:
New style hip-hop is choreographed hip-hop social dancing. From a technical aspect, it is characterized as hard-hitting involving flexibility and isolations -- moving a specific body part independently from others. The feet are grounded, the chest is down, and the body is kept loose so that dancers can easily alternate between hitting the beat or moving through the beat.
It is not overstating things to suggest that an effort to reproduce this on ice would be, to say the least, challenging and, in the case of a competitive program, outright detrimental. An exhibition does permit for a stationary moment; see, for example, 1:08-1:14 in Belbin and Agosto's performance. But that same sequence, as carried out on blades on a frictionless surface, can't be quite as effectively grounded as one conducted in sneakers on floor or paved surface. Certainly in competition this requirement is even more questionable; competitive programs are about edgework and maximizing movement across the ice, a bit antithetical to real rooted hip-hop action. In either approach, these simple issues of gravity and grounding may also impact that balance of crisp movement and flow throughout the body.
Ice dancers can't exactly rely upon full-body movement or footwork to showcase their groove. What they can offer instead are upper body isolations. We see this throughout Belbin and Agosto's program; it's a mainstay of recent hip-hop influenced Stars on Ice group choreography which even, occasionally, allows a surprise demonstration of breaking.
Perhaps unsurprising given the inherent challenges, a relative few teams are tackling hip-hop, and to this point in the very young season, most are yet to compete. Of those who have, even fewer have been recorded. To that end, Lorraine McNamara and Quinn Carpenter of the U.S. were one of only two duos at last week's JGP Courchevel to present hip-hop, and theirs was the more successful effort. Pairing Róisín Murphy's "Ramalama (Bang Bang)" with Flipron's "Zombie Blues":
It's certainly a novel approach to the program (if not wholly original), but also not quite hip-hop as, say, Tanith and Ben seemed to intend. On the other hand, at today's JGP Lake Placid short dance, Canadian duo Andréanne Poulin and Marc-André Servant gamely worked the upper body motion in their program to Usher's "Mars vs. Venus" and David Guetta & Usher's "Without You":
Of course, neither program goes especially hard-hitting, and it remains to be seen if something just a little heavier from another junior couple may still await us.
And failing that event, perhaps some inventive team in the future might consider giving this man a call.
Junior ice dance teams this season have the good fortune to have been assigned the blues as their requisite compulsory dance, the pattern upon which their season short dance is to be based. Much was made of the ISU's allowing hip-hop as a supplemental rhythm -- but that's for another post. Let's instead consider the blues itself.
The blues compulsory, like nearly half of all the compulsory dances, was created in Great Britain in the 1930s. Ice-Dance.com, with assistance from the ISU Handbook, provides a good technical breakdown of the pattern; more generally speaking, the dance was then and still is now about deep knees and deep, strong, long edges. And for as much as these elements are about the quality of blade movement, they're also about character -- the blues is a dance of passion, intensity, musicality, and connection, connection, connection.
A fine junior demonstration of the pattern (for seniors, the Midnight Blues supplanted the standard blues in 2001) comes from Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir at the 2005 Junior World Championships:
They certainly hit the edges and the knees, but it's the intro and conclusion that really put them over the top.
But what inspired the blues pattern in the first place? Only the floor dance to a very small extent; here's a sampling of movement found in real blues, original blues, as roughly concurrent with the compulsory's emergence:
A case could be made for the knee bends, but even that's being rather generous. However, what blues as a pattern does offer is more demand for close holds and connected full-body movement than do some other compulsories, those more concerned with the intricacies of footwork -- the technical focus here is the edgework, but it's packaged to require that challenging "something more" of a couple.
But while the blues compulsory has remained essentially static in its eight decades, blues dance has shifted considerably, seeing a particular resurgence in recent years as an effect of the trend for swing, and today's junior short dances haven't necessarily been created in a vacuum. For a few interesting points of technical reference, check out this demonstration of a fundamental step in contemporary blues dance, the lunge, from Portland blues dancers Dustin and Ally, as well as a take on the blues from dancers Campbell and Chris which makes a few nods to swing (and just a bit of Latin):
While ice dance by nature -- and the short dance in particular -- entails considerable technical requirements and restrictions, some choreographers and teams are doing their best to bring out some bluesy floor feeling and movement in the most allowable ways. Canadian junior silver medalist Madeline Edwards and ZhaoKai Pang's short dance, which placed third at JGP Courchevel, was a hit on the summer comp circuit, and for good reason. The skating is excellent, but watch the above-the-blade action. Here's a particularly sharp performance from August's BC/YT SummerSkate competition:
Next time: Hip-Hop. On. ICE; or, The ISU Watches So You Think You Can Dance.
