2. Hip-Hop

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:

ISU opens door to 'clean' hip hop in ice dancing
Young figure skaters allowed to go gansta
Tupac and Dean? Hip-Hop Approved for Ice Dance
Hip Hop -- wrong way for ice dancing

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.

1: The Blues

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.