Ice dance is a discipline of figure skating that historically draws from ballroom dancing. It joined the World Figure Skating Championships in 1952, and became a Winter Olympic Games medal sport in 1976. According to the International Skating Union (ISU), the governing body of figure skating, an ice dance team consists of one woman and one man.
Ice dance in 1976, its first year as an official Olympic sport (Irina Moiseeva and Andrei Minenkov)
Jackson Haines, the "father of figure skating"
Eva Romanová and Pavel Roman in 1965
Torvill and Dean performing in 2011
Figure skating is a sport in which individuals, pairs, or groups perform on figure skates on ice. It was the first winter sport to be included in the Olympic Games, with its introduction occurring at the 1908 Olympics in London. The Olympic disciplines are men's singles, women's singles, pair skating, and ice dance; the four individual disciplines are also combined into a team event, which was first included in the Winter Olympics in 2014. The non-Olympic disciplines include synchronized skating, Theater on Ice, and four skating. From intermediate through senior-level competition, skaters generally perform two programs, which, depending on the discipline, may include spins, jumps, moves in the field, lifts, throw jumps, death spirals, and other elements or moves.
Figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu (2019)
"Central Park, Winter: the Skating Pond", 1862 lithograph
Close-up of a figure skating blade, showing the toe picks, the hollow (groove) on the bottom of the blade, and screw attachment
Blade sharpening