The Dance Hall 10: The Saitama Samba 2022-2023

[Sylvia]

2 articles by Anne Calder for IDC - part 1:

The Rhythm Dance – It is a Changing: Part I – Ice-dance.com

www.ice-dance.com

In April 2022, the ISU Ice Dance Technical Committee announced the Senior Rhythm Dance requirements for the 2022-2023 season. The pattern was removed and replaced with a Choreographic Rhythm Sequence. For the first time in almost 100 years, a set-pattern dance would not be competed by Seniors in organized competitions.

2022 Skate America interviews with the ice dance community about the changes in the Rhythm Dance, continued (plus mixed zone comments from GP Espoo):

The Rhythm Dance – It is a Changing: Part II – Ice-dance.com

www.ice-dance.com

 

[Debbie S]

Anne did a great job with these articles (the one coming out tomorrow should have the fan comments), but someone should tell her H/B won the silver medal at SA, not the gold. I know it was close, but...

 

[Sylvia]

Anne did a great job with these articles (the one coming out tomorrow should have the fan comments)

Thanks @azcalder! "IDC concluded its discussion of the the 2022-2023 Rhythm Dance changes with interviews at the Ice Dance Final in Norwood, MA." The Fan Perspective section is at the end:

The Rhythm Dance – It is a Changing: Part III – Ice-dance.com

www.ice-dance.com

 

[azcalder]

Anne did a great job with these articles (the one coming out tomorrow should have the fan comments), but someone should tell her H/B won the silver medal at SA, not the gold. I know it was close, but...

Thanks, Debbie. It's been corrected. You have no idea how many times I read that paragraph and just skimmed over the word gold. Since I was in Norwood, I knew the correct color.

 

[Andrea82]

Ahead of Europeans, I looked at the seasonal scores in the Rhythm Dance.

Here are the entries ranked by SP.

Spoiler: SB Rank

1​	Charlene GUIGNARD / Marco FABBRI	ITA	87,09​
2​	Lilah FEAR / Lewis GIBSON	GBR	85,8​
3​	Allison REED / Saulius AMBRULEVICIUS	LTU	78,98​
4​	Evgeniia LOPAREVA / Geoffrey BRISSAUD	FRA	76,83​
5​	Natalie TASCHLEROVA / Filip TASCHLER	CZE	75,41​
6​	Juulia TURKKILA / Matthias VERSLUIS	FIN	75,06​
7​	Jennifer JANSE VAN RENSBURG / Benjamin STEFFAN	GER	72,58​
8​	Loicia DEMOUGEOT / Theo LE MERCIER	FRA	72,13​
9​	Maria KAZAKOVA / Georgy REVIYA	GEO	70,71​
10​	Mariia IGNATEVA / Danijil Leonyidovics SZEMKO	HUN	70,2​
11​	Victoria MANNI / Carlo ROETHLISBERGER	ITA	64,45​
12​	Anastasia POLIBINA / Pavel GOLOVISHNIKOV	POL	63,62​
13​	Mariia PINCHUK / Mykyta POGORIELOV	UKR	63,17​
14​	Anna SIMOVA / Kirill AKSENOV	SVK	61,9​
15​	Mariia HOLUBTSOVA / Kyryl BIELOBROV	UKR	61,32​
16​	Mariia NOSOVITSKAYA / Mikhail NOSOVITSKIY	ISR	59,44​
17​	Paulina RAMANAUSKAITE / Deividas KIZALA	LTU	55,2​
18​	Samantha RITTER / Daniel BRYKALOV	AZE	54,63​
19​	Aurelija IPOLITO / Luke RUSSELL	LAT	53,49​
20​	Hanna JAKUCS / Alessio GALLI	NED	53,4​
21​	Viktoriia AZROIAN / Artur GRUZDEV	ARM	53,03​
	Maria BJORKLI / James KOSZUTA	NOR	n/a
	Arianna SASSI / Luca MORINI	SUI	n/a

Reed/Ambrulevicius lead the pack for the bronze medal fight. One between R/A, Loporeva/Brissaud, TaschlerX2 and Turkilla/Versluis won’t end up in the last group for the FD (Taschlers are the ones not staking in the last group in the RD).
Top 10 cut is pretty clear. There is a considerable gap between Hungarians and Italy #2
The fight for the Free Dance cut will be hard fought. Basically, everybody until Nosovitskiys should be safe. Then 4 spots for 7 couples. Two don’t have a SB. Looking at B events, Swiss couple have scored 56.27 at NRW Trophy while Norwegian couple have a 51.11 from Santa Claus Cup which would put them last anyway.


Instead of the Season Bests which can be influenced by picking a competition with a generous panel, I computed the average of all RDs over the season (including international B events). I apologize in advance if I have done some minor errors in typing scores in excel to compute the average

Spoiler: Season average rank

			Average RD score	Number of competitions
1​	Charlene GUIGNARD / Marco FABBRI	ITA	85,365​	4​
2​	Lilah FEAR / Lewis GIBSON	GBR	81,875​	6​
3​	Allison REED / Saulius AMBRULEVICIUS	LTU	75,8425​	4​
4​	Evgeniia LOPAREVA / Geoffrey BRISSAUD	FRA	74,28​	3​
5​	Natalie TASCHLEROVA / Filip TASCHLER	CZE	74,2225​	4​
6​	Juulia TURKKILA / Matthias VERSLUIS	FIN	71,1075​	4​
7​	Maria KAZAKOVA / Georgy REVIYA	GEO	70,78​	4​
8​	Jennifer JANSE VAN RENSBURG / Benjamin STEFFAN	GER	70,0175​	4​
9​	Loicia DEMOUGEOT / Theo LE MERCIER	FRA	69,5966667​	3​
10​	Mariia IGNATEVA / Danijil Leonyidovics SZEMKO	HUN	62,9225​	4​
11​	Mariia PINCHUK / Mykyta POGORIELOV	UKR	62,8375​	4​
12​	Victoria MANNI / Carlo ROETHLISBERGER	ITA	61,968​	5​
13​	Mariia HOLUBTSOVA / Kyryl BIELOBROV	UKR	61,265​	2​
14​	Anastasia POLIBINA / Pavel GOLOVISHNIKOV	POL	60,884​	5​
15​	Anna SIMOVA / Kirill AKSENOV	SVK	60,0166667​	6​
16​	Mariia NOSOVITSKAYA / Mikhail NOSOVITSKIY	ISR	59,088​	5​
17​	Paulina RAMANAUSKAITE / Deividas KIZALA	LTU	56,02​	3​
18​	Samantha RITTER / Daniel BRYKALOV	AZE	54,4525​	4​
19​	Viktoriia AZROIAN / Artur GRUZDEV	ARM	52,8866667​	3​
20​	Aurelija IPOLITO / Luke RUSSELL	LAT	52,675​	4​
21​	Hanna JAKUCS / Alessio GALLI	NED	52,202​	5​
22​	Maria BJORKLI / James KOSZUTA	NOR	51,11​	1​
23​	Arianna SASSI / Luca MORINI	SUI	49,405​	2​

Reed/Saulius still marginally lead the pack of bronze medal contenders. Turkkila/Versluis’s average score is negatively affected by Internatiounaux de France. Without it, they would be at 73.59. Still in 6th.
Fight for top 10 would look more competitive. Ignateva/Szemko started the season slowly (two 56/57 scores at Nepela and Budapest Trophies) and their scores picked up later.
At the bottom it is still very close with 7 couples for 4 spots. Sassi/Morini are last because in their two Senior Bs, they have a 56.27 (which is higher than Ipolito/Russell, Jakucs/Galli, Azroian/Gruzdev’s top score in an international B event) and a 42.54 (which is the lowest score of all entries)

 

[clairecloutier]

It's also interesting to look at some of these numbers for the U.S. ice dance teams as we head toward Nationals.

Based just on season's-best scores (bold), there's a clear pecking order with the top 4 teams. They're all at the same rank relative to each other in each segment internationally (total, RD, FD). However, when you look at mean or average total scores (italic), as shown on the Skating Scores web site, G/P and C/P switch places:

1 -- Chock/Bates 211.94, 85.49, 126.45, 207.96, 84.37, 123.58
2 -- Hawayek/Baker 202.45, 80.93, 122.95, 200.01, 79.61, 120.40
3 -- Green/Parsons 194.19, 77.00, 118.06, 187.54, 75.26, 112.29
4 -- Carreira/Ponomarenko 191.31, 76.54, 114.77, 189.18, 75.91, 113.26

So, going in, the scores would suggest the podium is likely to comprise these 4 teams, with the main suspense being whether G/P or C/P wins bronze.

Below that, there is more parity among the next group of teams.

Listed here by total season's-best score, they are:

5 -- Zingas/Kolesnik 184.10, 73.14, 110.96, 184.10, 73.14, 110.96
6 -- Wolfkostin/Chen 180.46, 72.37, 108.09, 164.36
7 -- Pate/Bye 179.63, 72.66, 108.80, 176.70
8 -- Bratti/Somerville 179.14, 71.61, 108.29, 176.25
9 -- McNamara/Spiridonov 179.03, 73.17, 105.86, 170.71

A bit surprising to see Z/K in the lead among this group in season's-best scores. Perhaps they may have benefited from their CS event being one of the latest in the season? (Thus, theoretically, showing them at a stronger point than some teams whose top scores are from events earlier in the season.) I don't know. They only had one international, as well, which means their average score represents just that one competition.

Within this group, M/S have the highest RD score but lowest FD score. Wolfkostin/Chen have the second-highest total SB score but the lowest mean score (and by quite some bit). But, the top scores in each segment for these five teams are relatively close. So it would seem that Nationals placement is likely to be quite fluid for this group and will just depend on execution.

Also, we have the Browns and Flores/Desyatov.

10 -- Browns 173.74, 70.34, 103.40, 166.85
No scores -- Flores/Desyatov, presumably awaiting his release

The Browns' top RD score is only a little below the 5-9 teams. It's the FD where they're really losing ground; their top FD score is roughly 5 points off from most of the 5-9 teams. So hopefully the Browns are working a lot on that segment going into Nationals.

Flores/Desyatov are the wild cards.

 

[sap5]

Thanks @azcalder! "IDC concluded its discussion of the the 2022-2023 Rhythm Dance changes with interviews at the Ice Dance Final in Norwood, MA." The Fan Perspective section is at the end:

The Rhythm Dance – It is a Changing: Part III – Ice-dance.com

www.ice-dance.com

Agosto assessed the possible concern that maybe younger coaches were too far removed from the Compulsory Dance, resulting in a problem of no one to teach it.

“I don’t know if that’s the reason, but I’ve woken up with the nightmare that I was getting very advanced in my age, and I was the only person left who knew how to partner one of these dances the kids needed for testing. I was like, “Who’s going to take over these partnering dances?” Down the road it could be challenging.

The way CDs tested both technique and partnering is one of the reasons I miss them. Last season, we saw some teams change the traditional holds in the pattern; while this is interesting, I think changing the holds to easier ones takes away the partnering lessons.

Also agree that focusing on key points only is another way we are missing what makes ice dance so special.

 

[chameleonster]

The 5-9 teams are clustered very closely together and there's a lot of room for movement. Wolfkostin/Chen have a fairly high scoring potential if they skate clean which well...I don't have a lot of confidence in that. But if they managed it for once they could leap pretty high. Z/K had a fantastic international debut, so they're ones to watch to see how the judges feel at Nats. In the fight both between teams 5-9 as well as G/Pa and C/P fighting for the bronze the RD scores are very tight and it's the FD that sets them apart. G/Pa have a much higher SB in the FD than C/P, but Skate Canada was a highscoring event, if you compare using G/Pa's scores from NHK it's much tighter. The reason G/Pa's average score is a bit lower than C/P is because they had a later start and looked messy at Finlandia where they lost to the Taschlers iirc, so that's something to keep in mind. C/P also had a late start due to his injury so they could also have a large step up in the six weeks between Golden Spin and Nationals. I'd still say G/Pa is favored for the bronze but C/P are a strong underdog challenger.

 

[Dobre]

The Browns' top RD score is only a little below the 5-9 teams. It's the FD where they're really losing ground

I am curious if they got any feedback on why that was at their last event. (I think it was there last event?) The RD started off not scoring well early in the season & went up after improvement. So I am quite curious what it was that led to such a sharp difference between their footwork levels between the two portions of that particular event. Sometimes, footwork levels seem to have a lot to do with the bar a particular panel sets for calling things, but not in that case because it was the same event. Seems like it might have had something to do with the design of the sequences?

 

[Sylvia]

La Presse article A global talent factory by Nicholas Richard (Jan. 8):

Patinage artistique | Une usine à talents mondiale

L’ancien quartier ouvrier de Saint-Henri renferme l’un des plus beaux bijoux sportifs de la planète. Les meilleurs patineurs artistiques au monde s’y donnent rendez-vous. Comme si les différences entre nations n’existaient plus parce qu’elles s’unissent sous le drapeau de l’excellence.

www.lapresse.ca

Machine translated excerpt from the beginning:

The southwest of Montreal has given birth to generations of workers and dedicated people capable of making the ordinary extraordinary. The Montreal Ice Academy (I.AM) has laid its foundations at the Gadbois Recreational Complex. This is where Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue went. Since 2010, Patrice Lauzon, Marie-France Dubreuil and Romain Haguenauer have been working miracles there.
Two interview sessions were organized with the Quebec skaters to discuss their dazzling start to the season. While waiting for them in the stands, athletes parade with coats from different nations. The French laugh with the Canadians. Americans lace up their skates at the edge of the rink. Chinese people do their stretching on the catwalk.

 

[Sylvia]

Re-posting here from the V/M fan thread:

There’s a lot of good info in that article about his school and coaching approach! I’ve been waiting for more information about both for quite a while!

'Bringing the energy': How Scott Moir is moulding the next generation of ice dancers by Ryan Pyette:

'Bringing the energy': How Scott Moir is moulding the next generation of ice dancers

Scott Moir hasn't lost his edge.

lfpress.com

 

[sap5]

Does anyone remember which brand of skates Torvill and Dean wore when they competed in the Olympics?

 

[Belsornia]

39 years on, today in Torvill and Dean news.... Chris broke his little finger:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1613157315720404992

 

[Former Lurve Goddess]

Does anyone know anything about the rumour that next year's RD is going to have an 80s theme? The awesome possibilities are endless.

 

[Karen-W]

Does anyone know anything about the rumour that next year's RD is going to have an 80s theme? The awesome possibilities are endless.

Dear God, I hope this isn't true. As much as I'm a child of the '80s, there's no way I want to see an entire season of '80s themed RDs.

 

[skategal]

Does anyone know anything about the rumour that next year's RD is going to have an 80s theme? The awesome possibilities are endless.

I would LOVE this! Bring it on..

 

[BlueRidge]

Waltz, people, waltz!

 

[Former Lurve Goddess]

Waltz, people, waltz!

A waltz written in the 80s.

 

[BlueRidge]

A waltz written in the 80s.

Any waltz, the Rhythm needs to be a waltz.

80s isn't a rhythm

 

[Karen-W]

Any waltz, the Rhythm needs to be a waltz.

80s isn't a rhythm

Precisely. At best, the '80s is a vibe. Not a bad one, but a vibe does not a rhythm dance make.

 

[skategal]

A waltz written in the 80s.

Another one.

ANNE MURRAY - Could I Have This Dance 1980

Soundtrack to the 1980 movie "Urban Cowboy" starring John Travolta.

youtu.be

 

[marbri]

Does anyone know anything about the rumour that next year's RD is going to have an 80s theme? The awesome possibilities are endless.

Until all we end up with are Fame and Flashdance RDs

 

[Former Lurve Goddess]

Precisely. At best, the '80s is a vibe. Not a bad one, but a vibe does not a rhythm dance make.

So Golden Waltz 80s-style to hair metal ballads?

 

[Karen-W]

Another one.

ANNE MURRAY - Could I Have This Dance 1980

Soundtrack to the 1980 movie "Urban Cowboy" starring John Travolta.

youtu.be

You know perfectly well that this is not the sort of music skating choreographers are going to find for an '80s themed RD. As @marbri said - it will be all Fame and Flashdance RDs, with a little bit of Footloose and Dirty Dancing thrown in for good measure.

 

[Former Lurve Goddess]

You know perfectly well that this is not the sort of music skating choreographers are going to find for an '80s themed RD. As @marbri said - it will be all Fame and Flashdance RDs, with a little bit of Footloose and Dirty Dancing thrown in for good measure.

Sigh. Sad but true. But I'll uber any team that chooses goth, new wave or New Romantic music. Heck, Chock and Bates can dump this year's Bowie RD and rework it for next year.

 

[marbri]

You know perfectly well that this is not the sort of music skating choreographers are going to find for an '80s themed RD. As @marbri said - it will be all Fame and Flashdance RDs, with a little bit of Footloose and Dirty Dancing thrown in for good measure.

A Canadian choreographer might

 

[skategal]

You know perfectly well that this is not the sort of music skating choreographers are going to find for an '80s themed RD. As @marbri said - it will be all Fame and Flashdance RDs, with a little bit of Footloose and Dirty Dancing thrown in for good measure.

If all the RDs were Fame, Footloose, Flashdance and Dirty Dancing I’d still LOVE it.

If the theme is 80s we will know that the Skategods favourite ice dance team is LaLa.

 

[Karen-W]

A Canadian choreographer might

Yeah, I almost typed "everyone except Carol Lane..." No way would Marie-Universe use Anne Murray.

 

[marbri]

Yeah, I almost typed "everyone except Carol Lane..." No way would Marie-Universe use Anne Murray.

They have a lot of teams, someone has to get it

If you aren't aware Anne Murray is to Canadian folk music what Tessa and Scott are to Canadian ice dance. An icon.

 

[Karen-W]

They have a lot of teams, someone has to get it

Maybe someone from the satellite IAM, like Sales/Wamsteeker, lol.