Month: February 2015

PCS: Connecting the Dots #5. Thinking Categorically at 4CC

With the Four Continents Championships (4CC) the first significant showdown among five of the six North American dance couples bound for Worlds (Madison Hubbell & Zach Donohue did not compete there, while Kaitlin Hawayek & Jean-Luc Baker will not compete in Shanghai), we’ll take a look now at how the judges assessed those teams against…

Calalang and Sidhu Make Most of Opportunity

by Jacquelyn Thayer With a quiet entry to the senior ranks in 2013, marked by a silver at their single international assignment at Cup of Nice and an eleventh-place finish at the 2014 U.S. Championships, American pair Jessica Calalang and Zack Sidhu anticipated a similarly modest schedule for 2014-15. And then, in summer, came the…

Behind the Program, Ep. 1: Paul and Islam, 2015 Free Dance

by Jacquelyn Thayer After disappointing results on the Grand Prix circuit, 2015 Canadian bronze medalists Alexandra Paul and Mitch Islam made a bold move to regroup before those national championships: swapping out a jazzy Frank Sinatra free dance, choreographed by Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon, for a turn to the contemporary — an adaptation of…