What are "good" skating skills?

[kolyadafan2002]

Yes, for sure. In ice dance, to get a level 4 the only requirement is five perfectly clean turns from the six choices of mohawk, choctaw, rocker, counter, bracket, twizzle. One foot step sequence, our version of the cluster, (four turns on one foot) is a separate element. In singles you have to do a bajillion turns with a bajillion body movements. Because of this, judges in singles aren't looking for clean turns. They're looking for recognizable turns. That's also why mohawk doesn't count in singles: doing a recognizable mohawk is easy whereas doing a clean mohawk is extremely difficult. So in the end they're just different.

To put it simply: singles step sequence levels look for good skating and ice dance step sequences look for good turns and the good skating increases the GOE. That's why (in my experience) it's more common to see a level 4 step with a negative GOE in ice dance than singles.

Just to clarify for OP(I know you know this), only forward outside mohawk counts as a turn in ice dance (inside mohawks are of much lower difficulty)

 

[Flying Feijoa]

Just to clarify for OP(I know you know this), only forward outside mohawk counts as a turn in ice dance (inside mohawks are of much lower difficulty)

How about closed back outside mohawks (the step that ends with the free foot in front, kind of like a back outside choctaw but without changing circle)? I remember seeing them fairly often in midline step sequences.

 

[kolyadafan2002]

How about closed back outside mohawks (the step that ends with the free foot in front, kind of like a back outside choctaw but without changing circle)? I remember seeing them fairly often in midline step sequences.

They used to be allowed, but relatively recently were decided to be "too easy" so no longer count as a difficult turn