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Careers
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 1979. After a 5th place finish at their first Olympic Games, in Lake Placid in the 1980 Winter Olympics, and 4th place in Worlds that year, they never took lower than first place in any competition they entered, except in the 1994 Winter Olympics.
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)
(For further information and biographies, see the individual articles on Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean , decorative night lights .
Going professiona , lamp flashlight .
Although Torvill and Dean had been able to leave their jobs as an insurance book clerk and policeman, respectivelyhanks to grants from the City of Nottinghamhey 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 brotherister team Isabelle and Paul Duchesnay, who skated for France at the Albertville 1992 Winter Olympics, taking the silver medal with their West Side Story routine.
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). The couple moved to Hamar, Norway in 1993 in order to practise at the Hamar Olympic Amphitheatre which hosted the figure skating events. 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.
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 1998, 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, a third in February 2008 and a fourth series in February 2009. After the 2007 & 2008 UK series of Dancing on Ice, Torvill and Dean took the show on the road for a British tour; a similar tour; the “25th Anniversary” (of their Sarajevo Olympic success) is planned for 2009.
They have been also involved between Julyugust 2006 in the Australian version of the programme entitled Torvill and Dean’s Dancing on Ice.
Style and approach
Use of narrative and thematic music
After winning the 1981 World Figure Skating 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 Original Set Pattern dance 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 the overture from the musical Mack and Mabel, which evoked the emotions of a sweet but stormy romance; at the World Championships in 1983, they enacted a visit to the circus with music from Barnum, a performance which brought them the honor of receiving the world’s first perfect score, with help from the stage show’s star, Michael Crawford; in 1984, at the Olympics, they stunned the world with Bolro , 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.
Complying with Olympic rules
Torvill and Dean’s 1984 Olympic free dance was skated to Maurice Ravel’s Bolro. Ravel’s original Bolro composition is over 17 minutes long. Olympics rules state that the free dance must be four minutes long (plus or minus ten seconds). Torvill and Dean went to a music arranger to condense Bolro down to a “skateable” version. However, they were told that the minimum time that Bolro could be condensed down to was 4 minutes 28 seconds, 18 seconds in excess of the Olympics rules. Torvill and Dean reviewed the Olympic rule book and found that it stated that actual timing of a skating routine began when the skaters started skating. Therefore they could use Bolro if they did not place their skates’ blades to ice for the first 18 seconds. They timed the performance so that when Torvill first placed a blade on the ice, they would have the maximum skating time remaining.[citation needed]
Amateur competitive results
Event
19751976
19761977
19771978
19781979
19791980
19801981
19811982
19821983
19831984
19931994
Winter Olympic Games
5th
1st
3rd
World Championships
11th
8th
4th
1st
1st
1st
1st
European Championships
9th
6th
4th
1st
1st
Withdrew
1st
1st
British Championships
4th
3rd
1st
1st
1st
1st
1st
1st
1st
NHK Trophy
2nd
St Ivel International
1st
1st
Oberstdorf
2nd
1st
St Gervais
1st
Morzine Trophy
2nd
John Davis Trophy
1st
Sheffield Trophy
1st
Rotary Watches Competition
2nd
Northern Championships
1st
Professional competitive results
Event
1984
1985
1990
1994
1995
1996
World Professional Championships
1st
1st
1st
1st
1st
Challenge of Champions
1st
1st
1st
World Team Championship
3rd
1st
1st
The professional years 19841998, 2006
Song of India 1984
Music: Rimsky-Korsakov
Known performance period 19841987
Versions available on video/DVD or internet: yes
Competition: World Professional Championships Washington 1984
Result: 1st (10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10.) Technical piece
Designed in Autumn 1984 for the World Professional Championships held in December 1984 (source Facing the Music: 1995:148).
The piece was choreographed jointly between Jayne and Chris together with Graeme Murphy, Artistic Director with the Sydney Dance Company at the time. The costumes consisted of both Jayne and Chris wearing billowing orange/red trousers with brief top pieces adorned with India jewels. The piece consists of a tremendous amount of drawn-out lifts, twisting, intertwining and even sitting and rolling on the ice to create a balletic piece which they describe at evoking Indian…