The 2022 Beijing Olympic Games may have closed last week, but we’ve still got Olympic fever over here at Dance Spirit. That just makes sense, considering the many parallels that exist between dance and figure skating. After all, dancers’ jumps—like triple tours or straddle jumps—don’t look so different from skaters’ triple axels and split jumps. […]
Once upon a time (until the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi concluded, to be exact), figure skaters had to compete to music without words. Before this rule change, a skater faced an automatic point deduction if the music even hinted at vocals. Understandably, there were *a lot* of Olympic programs skated to classical music, and […]
There are plenty of current Olympic figure skaters who’d make beautiful dancers (first among them Adam Rippon, whose gorgeously choreographed long program won the internet, if not the gold). But today, as we wait for the women’s figure skating competition to crown its new champions, we wanted to throw it back to one of the […]
Pretty simple: It’s Swan Lake, but the lake is frozen. And you’re going to love it. Last night saw the preliminary round of figure skating competition for the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. And while I’ve always loved watching beautiful pairs skating (the ice-defying lifts! the perfectly synchronized port de bras!), one pair […]
Oh, hey, nothing to see here, just a dancer casually executing complicated figure skating moves in pointe shoes attached to skating blades. POINTE SHOES. ATTACHED TO SKATING BLADES. SHE IS SKATING ON POINTE. Is this real life? It is. Or it was, rather, a few decades ago, as evidenced by the jaw-dropping vintage footage of […]
Have you ever desperately wanted to do your competition solo to that music? You know, the song that gives you goosebumps in the best way possible, sends your dancer’s heart soaring—and for those same reasons is pretty much guaranteed to be used by a million other comp kids? 3-time US national champion figure skater Ashley […]
What do Kristi Yamaguchi and Evan Lysacek have in common? Let’s see: They’re both American figure skaters. They’ve both won an Olympic gold medal for their performance in singles (Yamaguchi in 1992 and Lysacek in 2010). They’re both currently enjoying a pressure-free visit to Sochi… Oh, and they both beasted “Dancing with the Stars.” Yamaguchi took home the […]
Let’s talk about Olympic figure-skating hopeful Gracie Gold, shall we? OK, no, she’s not a dancer. But 18-year-old Gracie’s one of those rare skaters who’s more than just an athlete. In addition to nailing all her technical elements, she moves with balletic elegance, fluidity, and purity of line—elements that, while they don’t necessarily affect her […]