Even I agree with dancrmike--it was blah overall, and I'm an ice dancer who's been at it for 25 years. Part of the problem with my enjoyment of the free dance is that I find the musical choices so unappetizing. Instead of enhancing what's done on the ice, the monotonous and heavy music completely turns me off. Apparently it turns many of the judges off as well: last year so many couples chose this kind of program for international meets that the ISU specifically requested that dancers select lighter, more entertaining accompaniment.

But ice dancers are cautious: in the past when couples have followed this dictate they were penalized, instead of rewarded. Shae Lynn and Victor (Canadians) did a beautiful flowing program several years ago that emphasized their smooth weight transitions, deep edges and soft knee bends. They were absolutely crucified by the international judges, told that their free dance wasn't difficult enough and ordered to revamp the thing.

I think top ice dancers look stiff sometimes because what they're doing on the ice is just so difficult that relaxation, while recommended, is impossible. The pace of their programs is "frantic" because a packed program is what garners marks.

Ah yes, the Italians. Their free dance was definitely more engaging than most, but the male half of the duo is such a poor skater (instead of using the blade to push, much of the time he uses his picks, a definite mistake that most figure skaters correct very early in their skating careers). At the World Figure Skating Championships last year where the Italians won the dance title their marks were loudly booed FOR BEING TOO HIGH! It was an educated crowd, and you couldn't convince them that a toe-pusher was worthy of the world title. Everyone figured that they received their placement based on the nationality of the ISU's president, that is, Italian president (Mr. Cinquanta) equals Italian world titleists, regardless of the merit of the skaters. Hey, it's ice dance.

I feel sorry for the American couple who have repeatedly outskated most of the teams in the top ten. U.S. ice dancers are continually held back internationally because the general public doesn't understand enough about the sport to realize that the dancers are being seriously undermarked. Skaters DO realize it, but the wrong is never corrected.

Yeah, the ice dancing was pretty disappointing this time. Well, not to be mean, but you can see that ice dancing has hit a low when the Russians didn't send a winning couple. 4 years ago was great, but this year was not inspiring at all.

Mike, I understand your criticisms, but I think a lot of them may stem from your judging ice dance like dancesport. Ice dance was influenced by ballroom, but they are very different. In ice dance, the connections tend not to be as strong as in dancesport because of the physics of being on the ice---there are many directions you can't go at a given time and also many ways to lose your balance. If it was the freedance you were talking about, yeah, the freedances tend to be a little looser in connection, whereas the compulsaries are where the skaters really show off their technique and connection. A little clarification, the standard hold is not possible in ice dance, not unless you wanna get really badly hurt, so that's why the standard-looking hold in ice dance looks very bad to standard dancers (no body connection, frame not so good, partners are not offset). Musicality, yeah, some things like sticking an arm up on a strong beat is common but cheesey. The awesome Russian ice dancers have incredible musicality though, it's just that there weren't any at the olympics this year. I also think the selections of music was terrible. This leads to wierd choreography. 4 years ago they skated to more classical things (more soundtrackish things) without lyrics; the second place couple did something Spanish that I think ballroomers would have really liked. I get the feeling that a lot of these choices to take an American song like "Survivor", although it's a terrible choice to skate to them, comes from the skaters wanted to make a tribute to America because of 9/11.