13. Paso Doble

At last, an overdue look at this year's senior compulsory pattern, the Paso Doble, a style which, more than others from the ballroom family, has had some unexpected success -- and challenge where less noted -- in its translation to icy life.

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:

11. Theatrical Dance

The Finnstep, paired with this season's accompanying rhythms, lends itself to a nice range of interpretive approaches, from standard ballroom to social swing or Charleston. Its tempo requirements, as well as the perceived character of the dance, also tend towards more traditional or standard musical selections -- and, in a few cases, selections from the great American theatrical songbook.

This installment will now take a slightly different tack from others, focusing here less on technique than a rather more general category of dance to which the Finnstep and foxtrot rhythms have led a handful of teams -- call it show, or theatrical ballroom. Performance-oriented, a little old-fashioned, and very American -- even if executed here by two Canadian couples and one Italian duo.

There might be no better point of reference for the style considered here than the enduring efforts of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, whose frequent on-screen partnership throughout the 1930s in particular essentially defined the classic dance film, courtesy of numbers like "Pick Yourself Up" from Swing Time:


While their film career brought their styles of popular performance dance and theatrically-inflected ballroom -- along with the debut or popularizing of several classic songs from composers like Berlin, Porter, and Gershwin -- to a far wider audience than stage alone ever could, they were also able to use film to their own advantage. While, of course, the closeness of camera and size of screen help foster both an intimacy and grandeur less easily accessed in live performance, Astaire took pains to instill one key component of live performance to the realm of filmed dance: the single-shot dance sequence, with cameras capturing one performance in full, cut-free and focused as far as possible on capturing the whole movement of bodies. This certainly, in its way, draws a bit of a link between Astaire & Rogers and the efforts of our ice dancers, though, sadly, most event cameras have failed to adhere to their own clean, seamless, dancers-in-full-view half of the bargain.

And in a more fortuitously direct segue to the short dance topic at hand, Rogers was actually introduced to a wide audience via the lead role in George & Ira Gershwin's 1930 debut of Girl Crazy, a production on which Astaire assisted in choreographic instruction. The show, of course, was later revised and revived in 1992 as Crazy for You, from which the music for Alexandra Paul & Mitch Islam's short dance was drawn.


It should be noted that while their program takes from a theatrical score, it does not draw from musical's book, and this 1992 Kennedy Center Honors performance of "I Got Rhythm" also points up the distinction between approaches -- the rousing and rustic group number and the typically elegant duet. But if the couple's interpretation does not derive from its strict source material, the extroversion of its expression and the outward-orientation of movement do point to its tackling a more theatrical than ballroom angle -- and an alternate category of source material might be considered. Take a look again at moments 0:54-1:03 and 2:19-2:30 in the short dance above and then take a gander at 1:00-1:15 in this particular number of legend:


Too, the choreographic aesthetic of Roberta's "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" is a little like the midline writ large, while 1:28 offers a passing resemblance to the short dance's opening sequence, 1:35 to end pose, and other moments throughout simply suggesting a spiritual kinship.

Film and theatre have an interesting marriage where the short dance source material for two of the world's top ten teams is concerned. 42nd Street, the centerpiece of programs for both Kaitlyn Weaver & Andrew Poje and Anna Cappellini & Luca Lanotte, made its mark as a major theatrical musical in 1980, but drew as its inspiration the 1933 musical film of the same name (which, it may as well be noted, included among its cast Ginger Rogers). As befitting a Depression-era performance dance piece, tap plays a central stylistic role in both productions, though staging is a rather different story. Take this performance of the title number, featuring the cast of its 2001 revival:


Though a group number, its sensibility can be compared readily enough to Weaver & Poje's program, for which the team worked closely with actor and choreographer Geoffrey Tyler. Their take, while more both more abstract and condensed than a musical's number, interprets a storyline loosely based on the musical's themes and works in a few clever moments of tap-inspired ice work at 1:00 and variously from 2:10-2:25:


(As a further note, consider also lead Kate Levering's dress from the 2001 performance above and the number worn by Weaver in the team's first outing at the U.S. International Skating Classic.)

While the two are excellent actors, Cappellini & Lanotte's program, for its part, relies in movement terms more on a standard ice dance vernacular than a clear intent to play off of the theatrical vocabulary. Beginning at 2:45, however, there are a few key moments that tip the hat in their own way to tap:


Cappellini & Lanotte do draw things somewhat full circle with their choice in costumes, which evoke less a show-biz number and more the street scene that comprises the original film's take on "42nd Street" -- along with a gritty pre-Hays Code streak most definitely not apparent in either ice dance program:


Of course, any ice dance program is in its own way a small, often-filmed performance number, albeit one bound to requirements of motion and scored by panels of technical specialists and judges. But the program making overt reference to its own performance nature creates its own category and particular challenges for any team taking it on. An introverted couple can find success by making connection its own projected element; natural showmen can carry off moves that could otherwise seem gimmicky in translation. And in the case of a short dance with its strictly-prescribed necessities, such an approach can offer an alternative, almost self-reflective take on mandatory movement -- a miniature movie in the midst of competition.

Modern and Contemporary Dance: 2012-13

Moving on for a time from the short dance, let's consider the ambitions of a few teams this season who, with the assistance of dance choreographers, tackled one of the less readily-adaptable genres of movement: modern dance and its offshoots.

Ice dance is more than familiar with Carmen. The dance realm has also tackled the composition with regularity, with one noteworthy version, featuring prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, scored by husband and composer Rodion Shchedrin's 1967 percussion-focused rearrangement of Bizet's suite -- the arrangement utilized in, among others, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir's take on the story. Despite this musical borrowing, the Plisetskaya ballet bears little kinship to Virtue and Moir's free dance. Roland Petit's sensual 1949 version, however, offers up perhaps the best-known modern ballet take, and it's worth a view:


(As an aside, note the sequence beginning at 4:04, and this lift from Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte's own interpretation of Shchedrin's Carmen.)

But Virtue and Moir tackled not modern ballet, but modern dance -- a different beast, to be sure (and one the team has previously visited), even as skating's restrictions lend themselves to a sometimes more balletic approach. Modern dance is typically defined more by what it is not than what it is, with an emphasis on its freedom of spirit and movement, but a slightly more technical analysis is useful, as is this documentary clip which is rather technically vague but offers a bit of background and footage.

Carmen was the product of collaboration with choreographer and teacher Jennifer Swan, and like both a traditional dance work and a critically judged program, it underwent numerous revisions and tweaks over the season's course, though remained rooted in its modern aims. The program's final performance is a good starting point for an overview of the general grounded aesthetic, including the low center of gravity movement emphasized in the opening sequence and the conclusion of the twizzles, but take particular note of the two side-by-side passages beginning at 4:33, which showcase the most typically modern of all gestures in the piece, as well as Virtue's lift positions; the curve lift at 2:20, rotational at 5:30, and choreographic lift at 5:41 showcase more wild, free movement -- modern -- while the control exerted in the first half of the combination at 4:09 provides for a startling moment, one more reminiscent of the modern ballet concept.


It's helpful also to revisit an earlier conception of the program, here in its first outing at Skate Canada International. Notice the original spin, primarily its exit at 2:17. Movement is rooted as much as feasible in modern vernacular, but even truer to the spirit, it's never wasted; every motion matters, and every motion is tightly bound to the music.

While Carmen was the year's only top-level modern program, two elite teams tackled a related style -- contemporary -- with input from traditional choreographers. Contemporary dance, discussed in detail here, draws from many of the principles underlying modern, but incorporates more of ballet's emphasis on the leg, as well as borrowing some movement from non-Western dance.

Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje worked with dancer and choreographer Allison Holker, of So You Think You Can Dance fame, to create the initial draft of their "statue and sculptor" free dance, as discussed in these two articles. And while Weaver and Poje's program follows its own path, a good point of direct style comparison might be this So You Think You Can Dance contemporary routine choreographed by Travis Wall -- the opening pose certainly stands out:


The restructured version the team presented at Worlds loses the direct comparison offered by that moment, but retains, if not enhances, its contemporary attributes. Both partners, but Weaver especially, use great line and extension in the lifts, moving fluidly with a free sense of flow. The original version of the dance includes a mostly out-of-hold sequence from 2:12-2:25 which suggests the sort of side-by-side movement common in partnered contemporary and lyrical; the revised program, as posted below, loses this particular sequence but does offer a multi-level transitional moment from 2:47-2:54 as well as a more complex, rhythmic transition between the first two sets of twizzles at 2:35. The second program is, more than a general contemporary piece, a lyrical take on a wordless composition: catch the percussive heartbeat sequence beginning at 3:11 and the gradual, slight stiffening of Weaver's posture and movement as the music and narrative draw to their conclusion.


Lynn Kriengkrairut and Logan Giulietti-Schmitt's Adele-scored contemporary free dance did not originate with an off-ice conceit, but was revised late in the summer with input from choreographer Stacey Tookey, who was responsible for a So You Think You Can Dance contemporary number with a connection to the team's program:


Kriengkrairut and Giulietti-Schmitt's program deviates from the other two in another significant way as a kind of hybrid piece, with the second half, set to "Rumour Has It," based somewhat more in jazz movement. But the first half certainly draws from contemporary inspiration, particularly in its emphasis on extended movement -- watch her leg at 1:22, and watch the free legs of both partners during the step sequence beginning at 1:28. The opening movement from 0:39-0:55 is also notable for the immediate dynamism and flow it provides the program -- important given the slower, relatively heavy nature of the musical selection.


As a sidenote, when outside the confines of the rulebook, Kriengkrairut and Giullietti-Schmitt have had the chance to tackle more floor-inspired contemporary movement, as shown here in this selection from 2012's Young Artists Showcase, choreographed by Robert Mauti. But of course, freedom from rules makes a free-flowing genre more possibly even granted ice's own impositions; it's interpreting that style within competition's confines that makes the true accomplishment.