Ice Dance is back in style :D

The Senior Grand Prix in Figure Skating has just started this past weekend and the good news is that it looks very much as if I'm going to start enjoying ice dance again :D It used to be my favourite discipline some years back, but the last 3-4 years (partly because of the introduction of the new juding system and partly because many of the biggest personalities retired) it's become too focused on the technical elements and not enough on originality.
Unfortunately, we still have very much the same kind of positions on lifts and spins being repeated by everyone so that they can get the levels of difficulty on the elements (and therefore points) that they want, but originality and polish (rather than stumbling through things just to get the highest possible level) seems to be coming back to ice dance, wheee :D
And perhaps for the first time since about 2003 or so, I have a program in ice dance that I absolutely love :) And here it is, Albena Denkova/Maxim Staviyski from Bulgaria (the current World Champions and first ever skaters from Bulgaria to ever medal at the World Championships) in their Original Dance (this season the prescribed rhythm is the tango) at Skate America 2006:



And what I love is not just the program itself, but I think also technically it's a really beautiful performance - especially considering how early in the season it is (usually at this point in the season all the ice dancers are looking very messy cause they still have 3 months to the European Championships and 5 months to the World Championships).
The Straight Line step sequence at the start of the routine is in beautiful unison (maybe apart from that Maxim covers a little bit more ice on the first twizzle, but I think that's the only part where you can actually fault it) and the one foot skating in it is fantastic - even after the twizzles, they look as if they could spend all day long without putting the other foot down (usually you see everybody putting their free foot down as soon as they finish a difficult step).
I love the first lift as well - even though all the couples seem to be performing a change of position into low balance kind of lift this season, I think this one if very original (and porny ;-P ).
The Diagnal Step Sequence again I think is great - most of the couples seem to be doing rather slow step sequences nowadays with all the requirements for what kind of steps one has to include to get a higher level, but theirs is at full speed and they've got a great one foot section in it as well.
I love the preciseness of the whole performance. They skate close to each other, use very complicated holds and hold changes and whenever they do a difficult step with a hold change it seems they end up in exactly the spot where the partner is expecting them to - they don't even have to look at the other person or adjust the position of their arm to be able to take hold of the other partner, it's great! :D

I'm really impressed with them - they weren't exactly convincing winners of the World Championships last season, only third in the Free Dance and the competition was very, very close (so whoever would have won wouldn't have been a particularly convincing winner I think ;-P ), but they really *do* look like World Champions now (usually whenever the expectations have been put on them, they've skated nervously). I hope they keep it up for the rest of the season!