Sarah Explains the Finer Sports

Because it was an Olympic year, everything seemed heightened in 2017-18. When I asked a friend to help me narrow down my lists of best performances, she instead convinced me to add more. And there was no way to shorten my list of the season’s biggest disasters. If all goes well, my look back at the past season will consist of seven posts. I’ve planned a “best of” for each of the four disciplines, plus three halls of shame: a combined dance and pairs post, and individual posts for the worst of ladies and men.

Any greatest hits list is going to be subjective, and I can almost guarantee that you’re not going to agree with mine. I do my best to include athletes and programs beyond my personal favorites, and to spotlight programs that wowed me despite my prejudices. Still, I have my preferences, and especially in ice dance, they often swim against the tide of mainstream internet opinion. My selection rules are simple: one program per team, competitive programs only, all juniors and seniors are fair game. These are the programs that have stuck in my mind since I first watched them, and that I think represent the best of this season in ice dance.

Penny Coomes & Nicholas Buckland
Nebelhorn Trophy Free Dance

After a long and painful recovery from an injury that might have ended the career of a less determined team, Coomes and Buckland returned to the ice with an early hurdle. In their absence, no British ice dance team had been strong enough to preserve an Olympic spot for their country. So Coomes and Buckland did what you do when you want one last Olympics before you call it a day: they showed up to the Olympic qualifying competition and slayed. There’s a smoothness and connectedness to their skating that’s rare in ice dance these days, with the difficult technical elements blending seamlessly from one to the next and advancing the narrative of the program. That doesn’t mean the program is short on showstopping moments, though – listen to the crowd gasp, then scream with delight, for a straight line lift in which Buckland flips Coomes upside down, then kicks her back like a pendulum when she grabs his free leg. They won gold by a margin of almost 18 points, a blowout of proportions seldom seen in ice dance.

Natalia Kaliszek & Maksym Spodyriev
Mentor Torun Cup Free Dance

It says a lot about the current state of ice dance that a ballroom-themed program feels like a daring choice. Kaliszek and Spodyriev, with their upbeat charisma and unflagging energy, are the rare team that can pull off the style and make it look modern. In the relaxed environment of this senior B event in Poland, their confidence showed through, and they maintained the character of their dance flawlessly. Once or twice, they chose style over substance and put a foot out of place, but the big elements were terrific, especially their difficult twizzles, which burst out of a clever and challenging entrance.

Tiffany Zahorski & Jonathan Guerreiro
Russian National Championships Short Dance

While other teams struggled to squeeze their styles into Latin rhythms, the samba and r(h)umba were a perfect fit for Zahorski and Guerreiro. One of the mandates of ice dance is to use the music to its fullest potential, and this team didn’t waste a beat, from the sassy hip shimmies in their transitions to the precise timing of their twizzles. At this tense Nationals, where a deep field of talent battled for only two pairs of tickets to the Olympic Games and World Championships, Zahorski and Guerreiro’s confidence brought them the edge. And the post-season glory, as fallout from Russia’s doping violations meant a bronze medal here was enough to send them to Pyeongchang. With a performance this strong, there’s no question they earned it.

Betina Popova & Sergey Mozgov
Russian National Championships Free Dance

Can there be too few Carmens in figure skating? The sport’s most iconic warhorse was a relative rarity this season, overshadowed by a new generation of tired selections like Moulin Rouge and Muse’s Exogenesis Symphony. But Popova didn’t get the memo about her reduced competition for the title of Most Convincing Carmen, and she smoldered for the cheap seats. This young, newly formed team looked jittery in their fall events, but they’d worked out the bugs in time for Nationals. They matched their edges and free leg extensions beautifully, which created a sense of connection. Popova and Mozgov came up just short of the podium, but they made exactly the statement they needed to make about their future prospects.

Christina Carreira & Anthony Ponomarenko
US National Championships Free Dance (Junior)

Carreira and Ponomarenko were supposed to own junior ice dance last season. After two consecutive years of American domination, it was their turn as the top team, but they showed growing pains at many of their major international events. At Nationals, however, they went above and beyond what they needed for gold. Their technical content as close to perfect as a junior team can get, and they make big moments out of elements that are sometimes throwaways, like a dance spin with fast rotation and clearly defined, attractive positions. But their greatest strength, especially compared with other young teams, is their performance quality. They’re one of a handful of teams – and the only current juniors I can think of – that can turn abstract, lyrical music and choreography into a coherent story with through-lines of character. For my money, this was the finest ice dance performance at US Nationals, at any level.

Madison Chock & Evan Bates
US National Championships Free Dance

Chock and Bates followed up last season’s quirky, team-defining Queen free dance with more classic rock, but this program didn’t create the same magic. Even when they didn’t bungle it – as they did several times this season – the choreography and theme of the piece felt safe and anodyne. But at Nationals, sitting in third place after the short dance and following lights-out skates by several rivals, Chock and Bates tapped into the rawness and defiance in John Lennon’s ballad. They found the technical precision they needed to win the free dance, but more importantly, they found a way into their music for the first and only time this season.

Piper Gilles & Paul Poirier
Canadian National Championships Free Dance

Gilles and Poirier got off to a rough start this season, with a film noir free dance that never quite cohered. They scrapped it before Nationals and started over, repurposing similar technical content into a James Bond program that only they could pull off: campy yet sensual, and drawing from some deep cuts in the Bond soundtrack library. The lifts are among the most visually arresting and innovative of any team this season, and Poirier’s leg extension, even in transitions, is stunning. Later in the season, they’d get those twizzles right, but they’d never match the ballsy enthusiasm of this performance.

Alexandra Stepanova & Ivan Bukin
European Championships Short Dance

Stepanova and Bukin took off at the start of this program like they were being fired from a cannon – and directly into a twizzle pass that certified them as among the best in the world at that element. While other teams struggled staidly through the difficult Rhumba pattern to music that wasn’t really their groove, Stepanova and Bukin had somehow gotten their hands on a rumba remix of Sia’s “Chandelier.” They flew through their required steps with such finesse that the Eurosport commentators, who otherwise kept a rapt silence throughout the program, let out a reverent “Wow.” That pretty much sums it up.

Kaitlin Hawayek & Jean-Luc Baker
Four Continents Championships Free Dance

Hawayek and Baker, immensely talented and prone to tragic inconsistency, are a tempting team to give up on. But every time they start to look like casualties of America’s seemingly bottomless field depth, they turn out a performance like this. It’s all the more remarkable because it looked, in the first few seconds, like it was headed for a disaster, with a stumble on an early transitional move. They nailed their tricky twizzles, though, and from there, it was game on. Hawayek and Baker interpreted “Liebenstraum” with an ethereal loveliness, but they used their music to push their technical side forward as well. Rhythmic isn’t a word I’d normally use to describe lifts, but the beat of the music seemed to hold Hawayek aloft.

Lorraine McNamara & Quinn Carpenter
Four Continents Championships Free Dance

I had to wait about a season and a half longer than I’d expected for my favorite American juniors to figure out how to skate at the senior level. McNamara and Carpenter had a difficult rookie season, with few major errors but a lot of scores that sent a clear message: the judges are a lot less forgiving at the top of the sport. This team was stronger each time they took the ice – more precise in their steps, and more confident in their unique artistic style. They just missed the podium at their first Four Continents, and with technical content as difficult as anyone’s. More importantly, their signature sense of menace was in full force, combined with a smoldering aloofness. Call it the Hate Sex Tango, and call it a sign that these two have arrived.

Tessa Virtue & Scott Moir
Olympic Games Short Dance

(Timestamp in Olympic Channel full replay: 2:48:00)

Virtue and Moir won the second individual Olympic gold medals of their career in the first ten seconds of this short dance. Their opening moves, sinuous and instantly in character, showed a level of musicality and commitment that no one else in the sport can match. They also skated so fast that the boards were a blur for most of the video. The lift and twizzles might have been less showy than those of younger teams who are more focused on pushing ice dance’s technical boundaries, but Virtue and Moir know where the real money is: get every edge and turn right, every time, and make it look like you didn’t have to work for it at all. And bring the Rolling Stones to a Latin dance, because at this point in their career, they had nothing to lose by being themselves.

Gabriella Papadakis & Guillaume Cizeron
Olympic Games Free Dance

(Video available on Olympic Channel site)

Papadakis and Cizeron’s short dance at the Olympics played out like an anxiety nightmare, so they put it behind them with a sweet dream of a free dance. While a lot of teams overact to compensate for the subtlety of lyrical music, Papadakis and Cizeron trust their charisma and choreography to turn an abstract piece into an emotional story. It helps that the attention to detail is all there, too. Their signature stationary lift lined up perfectly with a shift in the music, and it was explosive. While other teams tried to play to the casuals, Papadakis and Cizeron put a fresh twist on what they do best, and it paid off: during and after the Olympics, I got tons of four-year fans asking me about the pretty French team.

Marjorie Lajoie & Zachary Lagha
World Junior Championships Short Dance

The senior-level short dances were heavy on the awkwardness this season, but they were nothing compared with the middle school ballroom dance class horror that swept through juniors. One of the few teams who looked like they preferred the Cha Cha Congelado to dying young was Lajoie and Lagha. They kicked off the program with a master class in how to nail a pattern dance, with spectacular ice coverage and long, well-matched leg extensions. Then, the music sped up and they burst into a joyful samba, like their coaches had advised them to just have fun out there, and they actually listened.

Maria Kazakova & Georgy Reviya
World Junior Championships Free Dance

From the opening pose of this program, one thing was clear: Kazakova and Reviya were in character as Romeo and Juliet. At a Junior Worlds characterized by dead-eyed awkwardness in the middle ranks, it was refreshing to see a team relate to their music so confidently. They’ll need significant technical refinement to become competitive at the highest level, but since they represent Georgia, showing up and stealing hearts will get them a fine career of senior B events, not to mention Euros and Worlds. I hope they can keep their partnership strong as they grow, so we get to see their artistry and chemistry develop.

Anna Cappellini & Luca Lanotte
World Championships Short Dance

Cappellini and Lanotte’s short dance was one of the greatest delights of last season, and there was no performance more delightful than their lights-out skate at what will probably be the last Worlds of their career. The team made substantial technical upgrades for the Olympic year, and for the first season in a while, their twizzles and lifts were as dramatic as their steps and interpretation. But what set them apart was how fiercely they sold their performance, finding a perfect balance between crisp movements and unabashed fun.

Madison Hubbell & Zachary Donohue
World Championships Free Dance

When I shared my program list for this post with a friend, she said, “I thought you hated this free dance!” Indeed, I still think it’s a creepy tribute to rape culture, but this particular performance made me believe – and that’s why it may be the best four minutes of ice dance of the past season. Hubbell and Donohue’s technical difficulty can sometimes spin them out of control, but here, every step landed exactly where it needed to, in perfect unison and with beautifully matched lines. They’re a team that trades on intense chemistry, and it felt especially natural here, like they were playing to each other and bringing the judges and audience along for the ride. They certainly did what they needed to do to win me over, and then some.

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What were your favorite ice dance performances of last season? Share in the comments!

Next on The Finer Sports (no, really, it’s summer, I have time for the blog again): more season in review, and a little something special for my upcoming birthday.