The first question in Two for the Ice’s Ask the Expert series turns to the process of short dance creation, with ice dance coach and choreographer Carol Lane — an element of whose 2015-16 short dance with Juris Razgulajevs for Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier has been proposed for adaptation as a future march compulsory pattern — taking the reins.
Q: How is a short dance [SD] typically composed? Does it begin with the compulsory pattern and building around it? At what point is the partial step sequence created? — Emily
CAROL LANE: Great question! I’m not sure there is a “typical” formula for any program, and as the requirements tend to alter each season, it’s a bit like a constantly evolving favourite recipe. So I will do my best to share our creation process with you.
For me, everything starts with the music choices. When we know the rhythms for the upcoming season, my goal is always to try to create an SD that has a recognizable theme and feeling running through it, which binds the music selection and choreography together. You always have to be very careful if you choose music with lyrics, especially well known ones. You have to have time to follow the “thought” of the lyric through to its conclusion so that it makes sense both musically and choreographically. This is so important in forming what I call the “performance triangle” between the music, the couple, and the audience and judges.
Once we have our music selections, we have to decide how much of each piece to use, and where we would like to place our elements. The elements can be done in any order, so couples can try to play to their strengths by strategically placing their elements to their best advantage.
In senior, the placing of the Pattern dance [PD] (or steps from the pattern dance, as we have this year) has to start and finish at a set point on the rink. The Partial Pattern [PP] has to immediately follow, with both partners completing 5 clean turns during the partial pattern, and finishing where the Pattern dance started, making a complete circuit of the rink.
This year the non touch step sequence will be Style B, which means again only 5 clean turns to complete, and this year, no one-foot section. (I think there was a dance party all around the world with this rule change, because the one-foot section in a non touch can be very stressful.)
The final two elements are the synchronized twizzles, and the short (7-second) lift.
So now we have all our ingredients, and we turn to process.
Returning to my thoughts at the beginning, from the second I start to consider music choices I am already planning where, in my perfect world, I would place things. Sometimes things are obvious, twizzles on a twiddly bit, lifts on a crescendo or diminuendo, but not always. And sometimes not obvious can be very interesting!
I always begin by making my own musical edit of the program, and then we work with the computer at the rink as we start to mix our ingredients. For the Pattern dance section, we always try to choose music that is fairly close in tempo to the allowed rhythm range. If you have to adjust tempo too much, it can sound like Donald Duck or Darth Vader. We will spend a lot of time at the beginning of choreo just listening over and over again, until the phrasing and timing speaks to us. In this way elements start to jump out at us, non touch here, twizzles there, etc. Eventually the music will be sent away for final editing, and the Pattern Dance tempo will be totally accurate. We never mess around or take chances with tempo. Each SD is different and must have its own unique flavour.
Choosing where to place elements will impact on how long each selection of music will be in our 3 minute SD, and again in my perfect world each piece would be about equal in length…but it doesn’t always work out like that. Once we have placed the Pattern dance section, we will immediately create the Partial pattern to follow on and finish that “paragraph” of the SD. I always feel like this section (PD and PP) is the core element of the SD, and once that is placed, the other elements become the frame of the piece.
It’s very important to try to seamlessly integrate all the elements into the program, and once you have the core, you will know exactly how much time you have to do everything else, and hopefully include some nice transitions. However, since we have so few elements in the SD with which to score points, each one has a huge significance score wise, and must be placed to get maximum impact. I want to try to space my elements out nicely around the rink, but sometimes, getting from point A to point B in x amount of bars can be a huge challenge. So we may go back to our music edit and repeat or delete phrases or bars of music to give us the time we need to achieve our goals. Then, as the skaters progress through the season, we may have to once again tighten or loosen the music. As I said, it’s a constantly evolving process.
The couple has a lot of input as we move along, and part of the process is to make them feel that their elements are perfectly placed…for them. Some couples like to have their non-touch early in the piece while they are fresh, some prefer later when they are a bit more tired and relaxed. Some couples have to have their twizzles placed a certain way or they just are not happy. There are a million and one possibilities, and it’s our job to try to find the best formula for each couple.
Then add costumes, atmosphere and an appreciative audience, and sit back and enjoy!
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