18. Tango, Pt. 1: The Compulsories

The tango is so ingrained over nine decades of ice dance that in terms of sheer scope, it's too daunting to tackle as a single post. And so we'll begin instead with the fundamentals of tango on ice -- and progress from there.

It's lent its stylings to two senior compulsory patterns, arisen in five seasons for original dance usage -- and once as a secondary short dance rhythm, one of those topics we'll discuss at another time -- and otherwise functioned as the focus of countless more free dances. Of all specific partner dances, none can be more relied upon to appear annually than the tango.

The Argentine Tango compulsory, and its fellow far rarer Tango compulsory, date to that 1930s spell of compulsory development, as the two-decades-long craze for organized partner dance hit the ice. The Argentine tango proper had in fact become something of an international sensation in this period, making this a reasonably timely adaptation -- though, ironically, concurrent with the dance's temporary decline in its actual South American homeland.

The compulsory dance is meant to emulate its counterpart with "sinuous" quality, "skated with strong edges and considerable elan." It's tough to be sure which specific Argentine tango should best inform a skated pattern; certainly distinctions can be noted just between Argentine dance as a genuine street dance and the polished show style presented by professional champions Flavia Cacace and Vincent Simone:



Yet another example would come via the fairly formalized competitive level of Argentine tango, though such examples as available on YouTube are hit and miss in terms of either video quality or video-friendly dynamism as compared with other types. Regardless, what tends to separate street from stage and floor is that more casual quality; the footplay and ganchos are present, but the hold is a bit looser, the pace a bit more spontaneous. This basic tutorial video covers some primary figures and steps; Wikipedia is useful for a more detailed overview of movements you'll easily recognize.

The Argentine compulsory is strikingly different from the dance by immediate means of its frequent open, non-face-to-face hold; a related lack of footwork interplay also signals the distinctions. But in sections like the interdependent steps from 0:54-0:56 and 1:28-1:31 in this skate from Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat, there is some sense of tango's footwork:


But it's a very rare Argentine compulsory that includes a touch of in-pattern embellishment to reference the dance's footplay -- and fittingly, it comes in the last-ever skate of the pattern at an elite senior event:


Watch those feet at 0:53 and 1:28; you won't see those motions in other couples' presentations, and it's no accident here.

The other major tango compulsory, the Tango Romantica, was born of Ludmilla Pakhomova and Alexander Gorshkov's 1973-74 original set pattern dance. No video appears to exist of the dance as competed, but this very early 1980 compulsory outing from Natalia Linichuk and Gennedi Karponosov -- coached, as noted by commentator Debbi Wilkes at the top, by Romantica creator Elena Tchaikovskaia -- demonstrates how significantly the formal trappings of '70s and early '80s era ice dance suggests the feel of ballroom tango far more than Argentine:


While a multiple-compulsory-per-event need for versatile costuming helping to preserve this ballroom aspect well into the '90s, as demonstrated in 1992 and 1996, things began to shift in the IJS era. And by the compulsory's final outing at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, here skated by segment leaders Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, we can see how much the Argentine "feel" had slipped in despite no change to the pattern proper:


Next time: The Choreographed Tango

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: