This week's theme: Welcome to the Wonderful World of Ice Dance!
Jayne Torvill & Christopher Dean of Great Britain are without a doubt, one of the most famous and influential ice dancers of all time! They are known for their ground-breaking choreography and program concepts and themes, and stellar skating technique. They are 4-time World Champions and the 1984 Olympic Gold Medalists.
Their Olympic victory in Serajevo,(then Yugoslavia, now Bosnia and Herzegovina), was done in convincing fashion with this spellbinding performance to the hypnotic one-movement orchestral piece, "Bolero," by Maurice Ravel. Their performance earned six marks of 5.9 for technical merit, and nine perfect scores of 6.0 for artistic impression. It was the first time in Olympic history that all perfect scores were received. The accomplishment will never be matched as the 6.0-judging system was phased out after the judging scandal in the pairs event at the 2002 Winter Olympics.
I first saw this Torvill and Dean performance in 1994, 10 years after they skated it. (I was just a baby when this was on TV the first time.) During a summer visit to see my aunt Kitty, who was a big skating fan, I told her that I had become hooked on skating, too. I remember sitting on her couch, telling her all the facts I knew about the skaters that I had recently seen on TV in the 1994 Olympics. Aunt Kitty was excited that I was interested in skating, and decided to share something in her video collection. She happened to have an extra copy of a skating highlight video called "Magic Memories on Ice," and gave it to me. I watched the film as soon as I got home and was entranced by this performance, among others. I watched that video countless times when I was a little girl. This was before the days of You Tube, so it was the only way that I could see some of the great skating performances of the past. I still have the video and cherish it!! The video clip I posted below is actually taken from that video. The voice introducing the program is Peggy Flemming's.
Side note: Jayne and Chris came out of retirement in 1994, reinstated as amateurs and competed in the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. They won the Original Dance with a sultry Rhumba, but slipped to a controversial third in the freeskate. Regardless, no one remembers them for their result in Lillehammer, but for the enchanting, historic Bolero performance from 1984. To pay tribute to the then war-torn Sarajevo, (the Olympic skating venue had actually been destroyed by a bomb) and its people, Torvill and Dean once again performed Bolero in the skating exhibition following the 1994 competition. They even wore their original costumes. I didn't know about this Bolero tribute reprise until searching on You Tube for their 1984 Bolero. I am going to post the original Bolero, and also the 1994 exhibition Bolero. It will be an interesting contrast to see how the two versions, skated 10 years apart, compare.
Enjoy!
1984 OLYMPIC GOLD-MEDAL WINNING PERFORMANCE
1994 TRIBUTE TO SARAJEVO BOLERO REPRISE
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