State of the Art: Ice Dance

It became true yesterday. I will be watching Helsinki World Figure Skating Championships LIVE on the arena every single day in March as part of the volunteer organisation. Now it is time to summarize past couple of years, building ultimately to 2018 Olympic Games. Helsinki is a key milestone on the way as the results will determine the initial entries to Olympic Games. So, lets start with Ice Dance.

Picture: www.goldenskate.com

There is one star brighter than all the other and that is the French Ice Dance duo Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron - funny enough making the abbreviation of G&G by their first names as well (read this). They jumped from junior ranks directly to the very top of the seniors by winning both Euros and Worlds in the season of 2014-2015. Their magnificent free program combined of contemporary dance and classical Mozart Adagio made everybody to realize that there is yet another direction in Ice Dance and these two are the pioneers of that ground. I remember writing to my Facebook wall after their first GP competition that let me predict these to be the new stars. Finally we have an Ice Dance pair who could bring the true nature of contemporary dance on the ice and expand it to new levels with the fluidity of the ice. The inspiration for the program is from a dance piece Le Parc made for professional dancers. In the previous year I had paid attention to the smooth and extremely flexible body lines of Guillaume. He is by no doubt all time best male ice dancer so far.

The year after they continued their contemporary style with beautiful lyrical music.They left everybody speechless again by telling of a story of building a home in a new circumstances of their life. (Placing 1st in Euros and Worlds again)

This year they challenge their fans, audience and judges by coming with borderline music of rather abstract theme and rhythm and they are skating with their smooth contemporary style to a chaotic almost unstructured choreography. I must admit it took me time to accept that and I'm still trying to get the deepest meaning of that. Looking forward to see that LIVE! However they won Europeans again albeit the start of the season has been a roller coaster and they have not dominated Ice Dance this year.

Who is behind this duo? How come they have achieved such success and become the youngest ever Ice Dance World Champions. Their coaches Marie-France Dubreul and her husband and Ice Dance partner in competitive years Patrice Lauzon together with a choreographer Romain Haguenauer are the "Team Zueva" of late 2010. It is this team that has made such an impact on Ice Dance. Marie-France is former world medalist with Patrice but it seems that they will make even bigger impact on Ice Dance as a coach and choreographer team. And what a jewel they have with Papadakis Cizeron to make their ideas live!

But, this year we heard that the former multiple World Champions and Olympic Champions 2010 Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir are returning to competitive skating. Not only that, but with the same team of Marie-France and Patrice behind them. The pattern of one coaching team with different pairs concentrating on the top seems to continue when the old team of Zueva is slowly fading from it's fame. Virtue and Moir will be great but Papadakis and Cizeron have all the goods to go beyond great, something we can't imagine yet.