Often assailed as the synchronized swimming of the Winter Olympics, ice dancing is in fact a much more tense, more concentrated pursuit than figure skating because of the inherent restrictions the sport demands. It’s basically the restrictor-plate racing of figure skating, with just as much rubbing side by side.
How to watch ice dance at the Winter Olympics: A guide to understanding and appreciating the sport
What time is ice dancing on at the Olympics? Plus all the rules, streaming information, listings and more you need.
Photo credit should read ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP/Getty Images
What time and how can I watch?
Feb. 10, 11, 18, and 19, starting at 8 p.m. ET on the NBC family of networks as well as streaming live online at NBC Sports. You can also live stream NBC, NBCSN, and Olympic Channel coverage via Fubo.TV on your computer or mobile devices. And catch up on full figure skating results here.
Why should I quit my job and become a lifelong devotee of ice dance?
Millions of Americans flock to Dancing With Stars, a TV show where D-grade celebrities and professional ballroom dancers compete. This is all really good dancing, but on ice and without Us Weekly coverage.
What are the rules of ice dancing? Follow up: What is the weirdest rule of ice dancing?
For a sport that’s inherently “dancing on ice” there are A LOT OF RULES, but what differentiates ice dancing from pairs figure skating are the types of lifts permissible between the man/woman pair and that throws and jumps are prohibited.
Because the emphasis in ice dancing is on a pair’s ability to tell a story through music, skaters can never be more than two arms’ lengths away at any time, and not physically separate for more than five seconds at a time. This sport was probably invented by 24-year-old newlyweds who likely grew to resent it in their 30s and explored singles figure skating later in life.
Any kind of music can be used for competitive ice dancing, provided that the piece “has a definitive beat.” (Basically no Radiohead after 1997 and everything else is fine.)
What can I talk about to impress the ice dance enthusiast in my life?
So, (opens beer) basically the entire history of this sport is like if the Soviet hockey team were the good guys in Footloose: Ice dancing was created to translate the fluidity of ballroom dancing to ice because in the 1930s no one understood how important the males 18-34 demo was in all decision making.
That original ice dancing was, to be delicate, boring as hell. Other European cultures — like Russian ballet — offered a better and more interesting interpretation. So the Eastern Europeans started incorporating ballet and theater dance and making it more about the full body performance and not just intricate footwork.
So yeah, that growing influence pissed off the sport’s purists, who introduced regulations tamping down on all the upper-body nonsense and getting things back to the ballroom roots. Except that made the sport boring (again) to a majority of people and now today the sport has course corrected and there’s a variety of styles and influences that artfully display the tapestry of our world culture yadda yadda. SB Nation can’t confirm it, but there are strong rumors that the entire thing was settled in a fierce ice dance off in some former Soviet republic in the early 1990s, right at the height of Ace of Base’s influence.
The actual cool thing is that ice dancing’s influence pushed regular figure skating to allow music with words in competition and not just classical music and film scores. So now you can see anything — a song from Hamilton, the Chili’s ribs jingle, Goodie Mob, whatever, on the ice in South Korea. Thank ice dancing for that.
Whose jersey should I buy?
The French duo of Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron just broke a world record at the European Championships, setting up what’s likely to be a no-holds-barred gold medal showdown with Canadian favorites Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, who took gold in 2010 and double silver in 2014 and broke their own world record for short dance to The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For The Devil” at the 2017 ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating.
Their free skate to the Moulin Rouge theme also set a new world record at the same event, until Papadakis and Cizeron broke it a week later at an event in China.
It’s pretty serious heading into the Olympics. SB Nation can confirm it’s gonna be ...
a dance off.
What is the sport’s AMERICA RATING?
The amount of balance, athleticism, and rhythm required to ice skate in tandem to the beat of music would alienate most Americans, but we are also a nation lacking in reservation of the British, where the sport originated in the 1930s. As a people unafraid of dancing poorly in public, we’re a judge bribery scandal away from dominating this sport.
What’s the best GIF I can watch from ice dance?
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