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Torville & Dean:

Torvill and Dean

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Medal record

Bolero - 1984 Olympics at Sarajevo

Competitor for United Kingdom

Figure skating

Olympic Games

Gold 1984 Sarajevo Ice dancing

Bronze 1994 Lillehammer Ice dancing

World Figure Skating Championships

Gold 1981 Hartford Ice dancing

Gold 1982 Copenhagen Ice dancing

Gold 1983 Helsinki Ice dancing

Gold 1984 Ottawa Ice dancing

Torvill and Dean (Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean) are British ice dancers and
British, European, Olympic and World champions. At the 1984 Winter Olympics the
pair became the highest scoring figure skaters of all time (for a single programme)
receiving 12 perfect 6.0s, including artistic impression scores of 6.0 from every judge.[1]
The pair turned professional following the 1984 Olympics, regaining amateur status
briefly ten years later in 1994 to compete in the Olympics once again. The pair retired
from competitive skating for good in 1999, but continue to work professionally, both
separately and as a pair.
Both are from Nottingham, England, where the local National Ice Centre is accessed
through a public area known as Bolero Square, in honour of the pair's Olympic
achievements. There is also a housing estate in the Wollaton area of the city named
'Torvill Drive', with many of the surrounding roads named after coaches and dances
associated with the pair.

Contents
[hide]

1 Careers
o 1.1 Partnership and the Olympics
o 1.2 Going professional
o 1.3 Return to the Olympics
o 1.4 Life after the Olympics
2 Style and approach
o 2.1 Use of narrative and thematic music
o 2.2 Complying with Olympic rules
o 2.3 The Professional Years 1984 1998 / 2006
3 Trivia
4 Notes

5 External links

[edit] Careers
[edit] Partnership and the Olympics

Around 1975, Jayne Torvill was a former British Junior Pairs champion, and
Christopher Dean and his partner had won a British Junior Ice Dance competition.
Nottingham coach Janet Sawbridge put them together, and shortly afterwards, they
started their ice dancing history. They took their first trophy in 1976. They changed
coaches to Betty Callaway in 1978. After a 5th place finish at their first Olympics, in
Lake Placid in 1980, and 4th place in Worlds that year, they never took lower than first
place in any competition they entered, except in 1994.

Singer-actor Michael Crawford was the fourth member of the team, along with their
trainer. He became a mentor to them around 1981, and went on to help them create their
1983 and 1984 Olympic routines, and "taught them how to act". Crawford said of them,
"I found them to be delightful young people, the kind you want to help if you can." (The
Times November 1982). He was present with their trainer at the ringside, when the team
won their perfect Olympics score with their Bolro routine. (Source: Torvill and Dean's
1996 autobiography partially cited at [1])

(For further information and biographies, see the individual articles on Jayne
Torvill and Christopher Dean)

[edit] Going professional

Although Torvill and Dean had been able to leave their jobs as an insurance clerk and
policeman, respectively, thanks to grants from the city of Nottingham, they were not
allowed to earn any money from skating as long as they wished to remain eligible for
the Olympics. Turning professional in 1984, they took advantage not only of the
financial but of the artistic possibilities of their new status. They worked with
Australian dance choreographer Graeme Murphy at first, and they were able to create
not only routines for themselves but entire ice shows with a thematic coherence, which
toured Australia, the U.S., and Europe. Their projects included a filmed fairy tale "Fire
and Ice." In general, Dean would imagine the sequence he wanted to perform, and
Torvill would work with him to refine it technically. They choreographed, as a team, for
other ice dancers and skaters, particularly the Canadian brothersister team Isabelle and
Paul Duchesnay, who skated for France at the Albertville Olympics in 1992, taking the
silver medal with their West Side Story routine.

[edit] Return to the Olympics

After ten years as professionals, Torvill and Dean decided to return to the amateur arena
for the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway (along with other great skaters of the
1980s, such as Brian Boitano and Katarina Witt, thanks to a change in eligibility rules).
Their free dance was designed to re-establish some of the ideas about ice dance which
they themselves had been instrumental in dismantling; "Let's Face The Music and
Dance" had no swooning lovers, theatrical accessories, or violent ideological message;
just fast, delightful dance in the best Astaire and Rogers tradition. The routine did have
one move, an assisted lift, which pushed the envelope of the rules. According to their
autobiography, Facing the Music, the lift was technically legal because the rule
prohibited lifts "above the shoulders," and the lift they used was NOT above the
shoulders. The judges placed Torvill and Dean at third place, giving the second to
perennial silver medalists Usova and Zhulin, and the gold medal to Grishuk and Platov,
who continued to win gold through the next four years.

[edit] Life after the Olympics

After the disappointing finish at Lillehammer, Torvill and Dean "picked themselves up
and dusted themselves off" and continued with their planned and very successful "Face
the Music" tour, to be followed by numerous other projects: Dean choreographed a suite
of dances to the songs of Paul Simon for the English National Ballet, professional
competitions, touring with Stars on Ice, and collaborating with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and
director Patricia Rozema on the video Inspired by Bach: Six Gestures. In late 1998, they
produced an ice show at Wembley Stadium in London, "Ice Adventures," which
included a "flying" ice ballet and other wonders. In the meantime, they were still
choreographing, notably for the dynamic French Ice Dance team, Anissina and Peizerat,
who won first place in the World Championships in 2000.

In 1999, the pair officially retired, each continuing to coach and choreograph separately.
On 14 January 2006, they acted as coaches, choreographers and performers in ITV's
Dancing on Ice. They returned for a second series in January 2007.

They have been also involved (July-August 2006) in the Australian version of the
programme titled Torvill and Dean's Dancing on Ice.
After the 2007 series of Dancing on Ice in the UK Torvill and Dean will take the show
on the road for a British tour.

[edit] Style and approach

[edit] Use of narrative and thematic music

After winning the 1981 World Championships (which brought the distinction of
MBEs), and with three more years before the Olympics, they began to plan routines
which used a single piece of music and had some narrative or thematic element. At that
time, Ice Dance "long" routines typically used several pieces of music, often with
different rhythms to show off the command of different steps (thus their Free Dance in
1981 used "Fame", "Caravan", "Red Sails in the Sunset", and "Sing, Sing, Sing"); the
short programme used only one piece of music, but the entire routine had to be
performed three times in sequence, exactly the same way. In 1982, they presented a
long programme to excerpts from the musical Mack and Mabel, which evoked the
emotions of a sweet but stormy romance; in 1983, they enacted a visit to the circus with
music from Barnum, with help from the stage show's star, Michael Crawford; in 1984,
at the Olympics, they stunned the world with Bolro which brought them the honor of
receiving the world's first perfect score, and also with their dramatic Paso Doble short
routine, in which Torvill was the bullfighter's cape. They had learned to choose and edit
music carefully and design routines that were appealing both technically and
imaginatively, and their completeness of presentation included thematically appropriate
costumes.