Let’s dance 80’s! New Rhythm Dance article

[Ic3Rabbit]

So, we are waiting until after Worlds 'til the ISU confirms the pattern and/or rhythm?

Your post lists songs that show just how varied the '80s can be interpreted (pretty much any decade, for that matter).

It seems like many of us are spitballin' tunes, whereas once they announce the pattern/rhythm, that will clarify things, right?

My thought is that there are plenty of high-energy '80s tunes that can't just be edited alongside a Rocker Foxtrot all that easily.

First of all, it looks like the article link basically confirms it upthread by another poster. And don't be so sure about things that won't work as a rocker foxtrot. It can happen.

 

[Ic3Rabbit]

No, no, none of those songs except for Rock Me Amadeus...

My wishes instead:
Wham: Wham Rap and Everything she wants
Madonna: Burnin Up and Love Song
Billy Idol: Rebel Yell
Also: Cyndi Lauper!!
No clue about the rhythms and dances.

But I also need a bunch of those really cheap disco synth songs. Bring in my real guilty pleasures!

I gave random songs for possible rhythms. I never said that's what people had to dance to. I have an extensive knowledge of music, especially the 80s.

 

[theblade]

Yes, I wasn't inferring any hard music edicts from your post, just some popular examples of various rhythmic options. You're knowledgeable about the sport *and* music!

I'm trying to figure this out a little more because we've been going though a ton of music already, in various '80s rhythmic genres. I guess I will have to be patient until the powers that be list all the regulations for the upcoming season.

 

[DancingCactus]

Is this the most random and unrestricted theme ever? Like, is anything from the 80s ok, as long as it fulfills the requirements, about rhythm change etc whatever they may be?

On the one hand, cool! I love the 80s!
On the other hand, not much left of what makes RD RD?
Then again, anything id probably better than the last two seasons RD themes.

And whoever decides to skate to Michael HJackson, Janet Jackson or Prince should automatically get points deducted for beating a dead horse to a pulp.

 

[icewhite]

I gave random songs for possible rhythms. I never said that's what people had to dance to. I have an extensive knowledge of music, especially the 80s.

Me, I don't know anything about music, although I love it, that's what meant by no clue about the rhythms. I just posted songs coming into my mind.

 

[sisinka]

Better idea: Bring back CD!

I fully agree. It was the best way how to compare Skating skills and the ability of presenting different kind of latin and standard ballroom music.

You immediately had a picture about level of quality of each couple.

 

[kolyadafan2002]

Bring back compulsory dances!
I'll settle for the rhythm dances that included compulsory dances.

God even the pattern step is better than these proposals.

 

[sisinka]

"...with Sequence 2 we’re doing the opposite. So the man will execute the woman’s steps and the woman will execute the man steps...

I find it like a very very bad decision indeed.

Ice dance come from ballroom dance where the role of man and lady is determined. Try to ask ballroom dancers to exchange man and woman’s steps…I think they would stay in a shock from that proposal.

The man to execute woman’s steps and conversely… is literally deleting the difference between man and lady.

What will be next? Exchange of costumes? Exchange of behaviour? – in meaning of lady taking care of and protecting man, lady propagating the greatness of her man, lady allowing the man the exit the ice first?

How about roles in ballroom dances? For example the lady will be the bullfighter and man will be the cape in Paso Doble?

I think that one day it can happen that we will have Woman’s Pairs or Man’s Pairs cathegories like in Acrobatics.

But I would like to keep classic Ice Dance cathegory with classic man and woman‘s role alive.

Please, let man stay a man and let lady stay a lady. It works!!!

 

[icewhite]

"...with Sequence 2 we’re doing the opposite. So the man will execute the woman’s steps and the woman will execute the man steps...

I find it like a very very bad decision indeed.

Ice dance come from ballroom dance where the role of man and lady is determined. Try to ask ballroom dancers to exchange man and woman’s steps…I think they would stay in a shock from that proposal.

The man to execute woman’s steps and conversely… is literally deleting the difference between man and lady.

What will be next? Exchange of costumes? Exchange of behaviour? – in meaning of lady taking care of and protecting man, lady propagating the greatness of her man, lady allowing the man the exit the ice first?

How about roles in ballroom dances? For example the lady will be the bullfighter and man will be the cape in Paso Doble?

I think that one day it can happen that we will have Woman’s Pairs or Man’s Pairs cathegories like in Acrobatics.

But I would like to keep classic Ice Dance cathegory with classic man and woman‘s role alive.

Please, let man stay a man and let lady stay a lady. It works!!!

I don't know if you are serious or this is satire.

 

[Winnie_20]

All I have in response to this is: D I S C O !!!!
Okay, I am all the way in.

 

[DancingCactus]

What will be next? Exchange of costumes? Exchange of behaviour? – in meaning of lady taking care of and protecting man, lady propagating the greatness of her man, lady allowing the man the exit the ice first?

Why not? We're getting rid of this patronising and old fashioned behaviour in real life, why not switch it up a bit on the ice?

 

[NoNameFace]

It shows how desperate ISU or whoever sets the 'standards' for tge discipline are attention-hungry and desperate to 'go viral' inside younger generation.
Ice Dance lost its credibility years ago with amount of politicking and cliques going into it, but I see the ruination of its technical structure and some kind of organisation is well under way too. Pretty sad, but I'm not surprised - ISU moves the focal scoring point to judges and GOE, where results/hierarchy manipulations are way easier to execute.
The difference in treatment juniors vs seniors highlights it even further - juniors at least have a modicum of organisational decency left when it comes to structure of shorter portion of the competition while seniors really became an arena of 'who's cooler/fancier/in your face' contest, sprinkled with 'who's from where/who's training under who' dash of reputational politicking.

 

[labgoat]

"...with Sequence 2 we’re doing the opposite. So the man will execute the woman’s steps and the woman will execute the man steps...

I find it like a very very bad decision indeed.

This bothers me the most of all the ideas proposed. Is this a thing in ballroom?

Also, when you look up the top 100 songs from the 80s, you find most of them are already being used and we are already getting sick of them.

 

[sisinka]

I don't know if you are serious or this is satire.

Serious. Ice Dance is coming from ballroom dance where the role of man and lady is determined. An example of Paso Doble where roles are determined – man = bullfighter and lady = cape, NOT conversely or "choose what you want" mode. That is the history of this kind of dance. You can’t just come and change it all. And if you do that, it is not Paso Doble any more…

What DancingCactus mentioned…

Why not? We're getting rid of this patronising and old fashioned behaviour in real life, why not switch it up a bit on the ice?

Yes, worldwide we are getting rid of old fashioned behaviour, but….that „getting rid“ and expressing yourself is based on everybody’s personal choice WHEN he/she feels ready and HOW he/she wants to express it. We have freedom to choose who we are and how we will be. Nobody should dictate this to us.

As we grow we realise who we are and getting mature we usually stop hiding it.
Realising who you are doesn’t come at the age of 13, when you enter junior circuit and meet the requirements of the Rhythm dance.

And ISU dictating man to execute woman’s steps and conversely…I didn’t mention that they would primary ask them whether they feel comfortable with such exchange? And yes, dictating - because requirement means that you have to do that.

 

[Ic3Rabbit]

Serious. Ice Dance is coming from ballroom dance where the role of man and lady is determined. An example of Paso Doble where roles are determined – man = bullfighter and lady = cape, NOT conversely or "choose what you want" mode. That is the history of this kind of dance. You can’t just come and change it all. And if you do that, it is not Paso Doble any more…

What DancingCactus mentioned…


Yes, worldwide we are getting rid of old fashioned behaviour, but….that „getting rid“ and expressing yourself is based on everybody’s personal choice WHEN he/she feels ready and HOW he/she wants to express it. We have freedom to choose who we are and how we will be. Nobody should dictate this to us.

As we grow we realise who we are and getting mature we usually stop hiding it.
Realising who you are doesn’t come at the age of 13, when you enter junior circuit and meet the requirements of the Rhythm dance.

And ISU dictating man to execute woman’s steps and conversely…I didn’t mention that they would primary ask them whether they feel comfortable with such exchange? And yes, dictating - because requirement means that you have to do that.

Just don't watch ice dance then? LOL

ETA: Don't answer and lecture me, I know much about ballroom and ice dance competitively.

 

[Jumping_Bean]

"...with Sequence 2 we’re doing the opposite. So the man will execute the woman’s steps and the woman will execute the man steps...

I find it like a very very bad decision indeed.

Ice dance come from ballroom dance where the role of man and lady is determined. Try to ask ballroom dancers to exchange man and woman’s steps…I think they would stay in a shock from that proposal.

The man to execute woman’s steps and conversely… is literally deleting the difference between man and lady.

What will be next? Exchange of costumes? Exchange of behaviour? – in meaning of lady taking care of and protecting man, lady propagating the greatness of her man, lady allowing the man the exit the ice first?

How about roles in ballroom dances? For example the lady will be the bullfighter and man will be the cape in Paso Doble?

I think that one day it can happen that we will have Woman’s Pairs or Man’s Pairs cathegories like in Acrobatics.

But I would like to keep classic Ice Dance cathegory with classic man and woman‘s role alive.

Please, let man stay a man and let lady stay a lady. It works!!!

This bothers me the most of all the ideas proposed. Is this a thing in ballroom?

This whole hysteria is extremely, extremely funny to me because there's literally a pattern that has been performed with the man and woman doing each other's steps since at least the early 1980s (and probably since the very first time it was performed all the way back in 1934 (!) as the patterns don't tend to change very much.)
If people were not in hysterics about the Viennese Waltz back then, you have no right to be in hysterics about new patterns with the very same concept in 2023.

Also, when we're on the topic of ballroom dancing, there are a number of national dancesport (as competitive ballroom dancing is called) organisations, including the ones in the USA, Canada, Great-Britain and Germany, in which a couple is not restricted to being one woman and one man, and as a result, women and men are also not bound to their "traditional roles". And as someone who took a lot of classes in Ballroom or Latin dancing, I can tell you that there have always been and always will be a significant number of strictly female pairs, in which one woman has to take on the "male" role, to the point where they might actually have difficulty doing the "woman's steps". This is not even a new concept in the "traditional world" of ballroom dancing.

 

[sisinka]

This whole hysteria is extremely, extremely funny to me because there's literally a pattern that has been performed with the man and woman doing each other's steps since at least the early 1980s (and probably since the very first time it was performed all the way back in 1934 (!) as the patterns don't tend to change very much.)
If people were not in hysterics about the Viennese Waltz back then, you have no right to be in hysterics about new patterns with the very same concept in 2023.

I had no idea about this. I also never heard any coach mentioning this. Even Shawn Rettstatt didn't mention such a history.

Thank you!

 

[sisinka]

And as someone who took a lot of classes in Ballroom or Latin dancing, I can tell you that there have always been and always will be a significant number of strictly female pairs, in which one woman has to take on the "male" role, to the point where they might actually have difficulty doing the "woman's steps". This is not even a new concept in the "traditional world" of ballroom dancing.

I have a question. Are those female pairs caused by smaller number of men in the class? Because you mentioned that woman HAS TO pair with another woman. Or you mean that there were women pairs and men pairs in the same moment in the class?

In our country there is usually bigger number of ladies who want to learn to dance, in comparison with number of men.

 

[kolyadafan2002]

This whole hysteria is extremely, extremely funny to me because there's literally a pattern that has been performed with the man and woman doing each other's steps since at least the early 1980s (and probably since the very first time it was performed all the way back in 1934 (!) as the patterns don't tend to change very much.)
If people were not in hysterics about the Viennese Waltz back then, you have no right to be in hysterics about new patterns with the very same concept in 2023.

Also, when we're on the topic of ballroom dancing, there are a number of national dancesport (as competitive ballroom dancing is called) organisations, including the ones in the USA, Canada, Great-Britain and Germany, in which a couple is not restricted to being one woman and one man, and as a result, women and men are also not bound to their "traditional roles". And as someone who took a lot of classes in Ballroom or Latin dancing, I can tell you that there have always been and always will be a significant number of strictly female pairs, in which one woman has to take on the "male" role, to the point where they might actually have difficulty doing the "woman's steps". This is not even a new concept in the "traditional world" of ballroom dancing.

Agree with this, although the one thing I question is what about dances where there are two distinct sequences? If the PD was, for example, argentine tango, could you choose which sequence is the one the man will skate, and which one the woman would. Moreover, the difficulty would be unbalanced as one partner would arguably have the two more difficult keypoints (inside counter and twizzle movement). Does this mean that a stronger skater could compensate more for a weaker skater?
That being said, many of the traditional dances have harder steps throughout for the woman to perform so will balance the workload more. And for identical sequences (e.g. Blues), both partners will have the same workload for the patterns. I guess it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

 

[Jumping_Bean]

I have a question. Are those female pairs caused by smaller number of men in the class? Because you mentioned that woman HAS TO pair with another woman. Or you mean that there were women pairs and men pairs in the same moment in the class?

In our country there is usually bigger number of ladies who want to learn to dance, in comparison with number of men.

Yes, they were usually caused by smaller numbers of men (the same reason why solo ice dance is mainly populated by women).

However, we did have a decent number of men that had a lot of fun partnering with the other men in the rare event we had too many men (which did happen from time to time). Probably because many of the men who do continue dance past a certain level have to very quickly learn how to be confident in their own masculinity in a sport that has a distinctly female designation within our current society. It also definitely helped that they all got along well and would partner just because they could at what we called "dance evenings" (basically, evenings that were open to anyone of any level, with or without a partner, and with less of a strict class structure).