Dancing on Ice , livre ebook

DANCING ON ICE
A CONCISE ESSAY ON THIS CLASSIC WINTER SPORT INCLUDING ITS ORIGIN, POPULAR MUSIC CHOICES AND USEFUL INFORMATION AND DIAGRAMS ON SPECIFIC SKATING TECHNIQUES.

WITH EMPHASIS ON THE WALTZ.

By
ERNEST LAW
Copyright 2018 Read Books Ltd.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
CONTENTS

I
Valsing on the Ice-Origin and Description of the Skating Valse
II
The Change of Rotation
III
Hints and Aids to Proficiency
IV
Explanatory Notes on the Points of Valsing Form
V
The Back Double Wave
VI
Rules and Regulations for Competition in Valsing on Ice
VII
A Few Valses Suitable for the Ice
VALSING ON THE ICE
I
ORIGIN AND DESCRIPTION OF THE SKATING VALSE
A RECENT , and assuredly the most popular, modern developments of the International style of Figure Skating, is Valsing on the Ice, that is the execution by a lady and gentleman, in the ordinary valsing position, of gliding steps to valse music.
Declared by some devotees of the art to be as far in advance of valsing in a ball-room as riding and bicycling are to walking, and by others to be like flying and the most delightful form of motion ever devised by man, the ice-valse has attained, since its first introduction at the London Rinks in 1895, an extraordinary vogue, almost amounting to a furore. Season after season it has gone on widening the circle of its votaries and increasing their ardour. In spite of stern discouragement from the ramrod school, the valse is spreading wherever ice lies open to the steel-shod foot of man or woman. Even on those once jealously guarded preserves-the rinks at Anglo-Swiss mountain resorts-the triumphant three-step draws all within the sweep of its seductive vortex.
One might, in fact, apostrophise the modern skating valse-that goal of the rink novice, that never-palling delight of the finished performer-as Byron did its prototype, the original dance, on its first introduction into London ball-rooms nearly a hundred years ago:
Wide and more wide thy witching circle spreads, And turns-if nothing else-at least our heads!
And assuredly, for a suitably matched pair, who move well together, there is, in this ice-valse of to-day, with its quick revolutions, its long sweeping strokes, its gliding swing, its wonderful speed on delicately poised edges, and its floating, undulatory, rhythmic movement, a fascination and enchantment altogether peculiar to itself, and unapproachable by the ordinary ball-room dance.
Tell me -writes one enthusiastic lady-valser in Vanity Fair - is there anything in the whole world to come up to valsing on the ice? The only drawback is that it quite spoils you for valsing in a ball-room. Who that has once known the glorious intoxication of a mad whirl round on flying skates, can ever care again to dance in satin slippers on an ordinary parquet floor?
Who was the first inventor of the now famous skating-valse is not known. Attempts to valse on ice were made, we believe, as long ago as the late seventies and early eighties at Hampton Court, then, and indeed a century or so before that time, one of the chief centres of figure-skating in the South of England, and one, moreover, where the traditions of the old English natural and free style-recently developed into the International have always been preserved. But no satisfactory figure or movement suitable for a valsing pair appears to have been evolved.
The date and place of origin, however, of the present ice-valse, is known for certain, namely, the Palais de Gl ce in the Champs Elys es, in 1894. Thence it was brought in the following year, by the instructors, to the rinks at Niagara and Hengler s, and soon after to Prince s; and so strong was the hold it at once took of the modern English skating world that abroad-in Berlin, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Brussels, Stockholm, St. Moritz, Davos, c.-it is now generally known as the English Valse.

A C OUPLE V ALSING ON THE I CE .
The Lady is on her left forward outside edge, coming up to the cusp of the three-turn; her partner is on his right backward outside edge, about to rock over to his left forward outside.
Nevertheless its present great popularity with our countrymen and countrywomen, both at home and abroad, was only attained in spite of keen opposition from the old fashioned mid-Victorian skaters, and especially from the inventors of the pseudo- English style of skating; their petrifying rules of cast-iron form being adapted for nothing so well as to teach the would-be valser on