6. French Dance

Among the less direct approaches taken to this season's Yankee Polka is the Gallic route: the polka lends itself rather intriguingly to French style. And for more than one established team this season, the polka recommended itself to the can-can.

The can-can itself descends directly from the appropriately 2/4-timed galop, a popular nineteenth-century European country dance which itself would later give rise to the...polka. After a spell as a social dance, the can-can's flashier aspects would lend itself to its development as a performative style, a good demonstration of which is offered in this vintage clip:


Notice the splits, please, as well as Offenbach's "Infernal Galop," the musical selection so synonymous with all things can-can that it's referred to by the dance's name more often than not.

While this video gives us the most classic of classical can-can, of note was the social, coupled nature of its earliest incarnation, with men and women performing the dance's assorted splashy movements in concert. While video of this take on the floor dance is difficult to locate, the general idea, one might guess, lives on rather well in Kharis Ralph and Asher Hill's take on the style, which is preceded by an appropriately bubbly take on Gigi. From 1:54 onward, Hill's movements, from high kicks to even more, match Ralph's to an almost startling degree:


Of course, the traditional French can-can is the centerpiece of Nathalie Pechalat and Fabian Bourzat's "Moulin Rouge" dance (performed here for the Parisian Trophee Eric Bompard audience), wherein the partnered aspect is less about a shared performance and more about a patron's flirtations with a music hall dancer. Traditional skirt choreography, little utilized in Ralph and Hill's more couple-oriented piece, is a major above-the-blade component of this can-can:


As a sidenote, the slowed-down rendition of Offenbach's piece accompanying Pechalat and Bourzat's Yankee Polka sequences is indeed but a slowed-down rendition of the "Infernal Galop." But at least it isn't this.

The audience-grabbing appeal of the can-can notwithstanding, however, another couple demonstrates that there's more than one way to de-Yankeefy the Polka.

The bal-musette might be the main source of inspiration for any French-themed program that tackles a social rhythm like waltz or polka and aesthetically calls back to the late nineteenth through mid-twentieth century. This was the angle taken by a team like Delobel and Schoenfelder in their 2010 Olympics original dance, an interesting little bridge piece between the waltzes and the can-cans. And if the genre reached its peak popularity in the 1940s and '50s, then Alexandra Paul and Mitch Islam's Edith Piaf-scored waltz/polka might be considered the ultimate heydey of bal-musette kind of program -- even if Piaf isn't often associated with social dance.


One irony is the fact that Piaf's waltz "La Foule," which kicks off Paul and Islam's SD, is actually a cover of Peruvian vals "Que nadie sepa mi sufrir." Piaf's rendition, though, adjusts the pacing and substitutes in more traditional bal-musette instrumentation, transforming a South American tango cousin into essentially a sprightlier version of French musical waltz (compare with "Padam Padam" or Madison Chock and Greg Zuerlein's 2010-11 use of such).

What makes for a sprightly French waltz song, however, is a little different from what typically may accompany a French valse dance. YouTube's pickings are slim, but a few moments with the valse musette or the folk waltz are reasonably instructive:


Here we come again to the interesting quandary of competitive skate versus traditional floor dance, and the valse musette as demonstrated in Jazz Age-era clips is possibly even less compatible with the demands of an ice dance program. The rotations at 0:56-0:58 and 1:42-1:43 in Paul and Islam's program above might be the closest approximations to valse musette movement, with allowance made for physics and a slightly more laidback tempo. Certainly, the greater part of a short dance is concerned with the inclusion of required elements; while a country-western program, for example, can borrow from that style's vernacular in a variety of ways, the valse musette is, as can be seen, a fairly repetitive dance. Paul and Islam's program holds together tightly -- and is probably a stronger waltz, with its emphasis on closed holds and close skating, than many others calling upon that rhythm -- but its style may be less traditional French dance and more idea of French dance. It's not at all a choreographic parent, but there's a certain theatrical stylistic sensibility just a little reminiscent of, say, a French-set musical.

5. Country Western

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.

4: The Polka

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 step chart 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,: