While intimately associated with Spanish culture, namely its bullfighting tradition, Paso Doble as dance actually originated in France as a sort of military march and later gained full steam as a style in that same country in the 1920s and '30s. The dramatic nature of its character meant it developed primarily as an exhibition dance more than social, and it's exceedingly challenging to locate examples of Paso Doble as known in the west that are not a demonstration of the Latin ballroom dance, although another folkish strain exists in countries such as the Philippines. This video featuring Christoph Kies and Blanca Ribas Turón performing to a song most closely bound with the Paso (and not unfamiliar to skating fans), "España Cañi," is a ballroom offering with some obvious touches of the dance's flamenco and gypsy influences; the song title, in fact, means "Gypsy Spain."
Meanwhile, this instructional series, designated for the bronze, silver and gold international levels of the dance, provides an exceptionally useful rundown of its figures:
It's likely that no ice dance Paso Doble is better known and remembered than Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean's 1983-84 Original Set Pattern dance, made famous as part of their Olympic gold-winning performance:
The team quite obviously follows one particular key tenet of Paso -- characterization, here with Dean embodying the matador in machismo attitude and Torvill his cape. (Dean, in choreographing this season's Paso Doble short dance for Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, would revisit the concept.) In other senses, however, the actual Paso influence is rather difficult to discern; the interplay between dancers is considerably minimized in Torvill's more passively choreographed role as cape, while the floor Paso's touches of flamenco styling evident in arm gesture, stance and general full body expression are also minimal. Notably, the music used here -- Rimsky-Korsakov's "Capriccio Espagnol" -- is in 6/8 time, versus Paso's 2/4 rhythm. Because the couple spend virtually no time in face-to-face hold, comparison to Paso figures is challenging, though a variant on a traveling spin can be noted at moments like 0:51-0:55, while touches of separation might be present in execution of certain turns.
In a surprising turn of events for this blog, however, a more direct tribute to ballroom Paso can be seen in the 1938 compulsory pattern that bears its name, performed in this clip by Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin at their victorious 2009 World Championships:
The tango hold is already an improvement over many a killian-heavy compulsory we've examined here, but also clearly links the dance across disciplines. While any attempted nod at the figures is very general at best, the upright frame demanded of Paso on the floor is especially emphasized here in the slip steps (serving this season as part of the short dance's first key point); hand flourish too is encouraged in the moments directly following those steps, first at 0:47 and 0:50 here, lending to more obvious Paso character.
While many of this season's short dances draw more overtly on flamenco than Paso -- though this, too, can work to enhance a Paso display, as suggested above -- a few are more ballroom-driven in nature, such as that from Grand Prix Final champions Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje. The cape element in Weaver and Poje's dance is more abstracted along the lines of ballroom's approach, with sequences like those from 2:33-2:36 and 2:43-2:45 rather akin to loose interpretations of a caping walk. The posing from 2:59-3:04, too, reflects the combative dynamic often demonstrated in performance:
With ice dance analysis concluded for now, I'll leave with this showdance interpretation of Paso from Pavlo Barsuk and Anna Trebunskaya, relying heavily on the Latin vocabulary but offering a little more by way of comparison to the skating realm with its continuous movement and incorporation of non-permissible elements like the concluding lift:
