Don't psychoanalyze FS, Just Enjoy It

Actually, Mathman's post about the new book "Culture On Ice" got me thinking about skating and wondering what is with all this "phsycobabble" lately about figure skating? Why do people think they have to disect figure skating?

Do you think great skaters like Donald Jackson and Dick Button pondered whether people were thinking they were showing a feminine side when they donned their skates and took to the ice? I doubt it. They skated merely for the joy of skating - as do - most skaters.

Figure skating is for both men and women. As far back as 1585 both women and men ice skated. In fact, "In Macaulay’s History of England we read that Charles II’s son, the Duke of Monmouth, learned the art of skating from the Dutch ladies on the frozen canals during his tour there, and that in return he gave them instruction in English country dances."

Tracing figures dominated the sport until recently. This was a discipline that both men and women could do. Competitions were held to see who could do the best tracings.

"History of Figures…………… Figure skating gets its name from the Compulsory Figures (also known as School Figures), a series of patterns based on the figure eight or three-circle serpentine form. There are 42 figures classified by the International Skating Union. The skater traces the pattern on clean ice three times. Performed well, the tracings will be virtually identical. To make matters more difficult, the skater had to skate the Figure using a prescribed part of the blade (such as the forward inside edge of the left skate). In 1991, figures were eliminated from international competition after 100 years."

I am getting carried away here! My point is, read these books "with a grain of salt" and enjoy figure skating for what it is - a wonderful sport for all either by participating or just watching! Either way, you will experience the "joy of figure skating."


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Goethe at Frankfurt 1862. From ‘’The Poetry of Skating"


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I might have given you the wrong idea of Kestnbaum's book, LAD. It's not all gender-based social criticism by any means. In fact, the topics that I brought up on the other threads (i.e., is figure skating a feminine sport, etc.) are raised by EllynK exactly for the purpose of criticising them, as you have in this post.

EllynK devotes three very interesting chapters to the history of the sport, which I think that you would like. "The Beginnings of Skating on Ice," "Issues in the Delvelopment of Figure Skating," and "Specularity."

The chapter of Specularity was about this interesting topic. School Figures began when some show-off wise guys learned how to carve their names or initials (or the initials of their girl friends) into the ice. Then people started to wonder what other shapes could be constructed. At it's hey-day in the first part of the twentieth century, skating innovators, led by the British, made it a science to try to figure out what new turns and tracings were possible, and exactly what motions of the skaters muscles were needed to accomplish this.

But over the years, skating as "spectacle" gradually took over from skating as "science," leading to the emphasis on jumps and spins that we see today.

To me, stuff like that is very interesting, just as are the posts that you make about the history of skating and it's colorful personalities from the past.

Mathman

I read Culture on Ice, and agreed, at times it (and other things like it) seem too analytical. But I am happy to indulge in this over-analysis during times like these - the off-season, when I can't watch new skating on TV so I feel like I can't get enough! Then I want to read everything I can get my hands on about figure skating, because really, old videos don't hold me over for too long