The Tea-Time Foxtrot: An In-Depth Analysis

The 2019-20 season in figure skating has officially come to an abrupt end, and even though this is a season that did not conclude in the greatest of circumstances, I'd like to look back at something I found particularly interesting this season: the introduction of the Tea-Time Foxtrot as a competitive pattern dance. This dance, the required pattern every junior couple had to execute during their rhythm dance, was expected to be quite the challenge, as it features many difficult turns for each partner and unusual partnering that a couple with limited experience may struggle with. It's a dance that my coaches have actually described as more of a step sequence than a pattern, partly because it is much more compact than some other dances in which the couple seems to fly down the length of the ice. Considering this dance was essentially created as a step sequence, this makes a whole lot of sense.

So, while I have the time, I thought I would take a look at how teams faired with this dance. I looked back at the scores and levels (for both sections of the dance) for every team who competed at a Junior Grand Prix event, the Youth Olympic Games, or the Junior World Championships. I'd like to see if there's a difference between how well each team did in the first half of the dance (Section 1) and the second (Section 2). I also want to see how often teams are getting each level, and the grades of execution that are being awarded to them from the judging panel. Let's see how the teams did this year with the pattern.

Background

Pattern dances are a staple in the testing and competitive structure of ice dancing, and have been a requirement for junior and senior couples to do within their short dance (now called the rhythm dance) since the 2010-11 season. After the 2014 Olympic season, a new element was introduced to the senior short dance, this being the partial step sequence. In this element, couples would essentially create their own pattern dance, staying in hold and traveling counter clockwise around the ice. While in the first season, levels for this element were based on the execution of repeated steps from the required paso doble pattern, the rules changed for the 2015-16 season so that levels would be determined largely by the execution of difficult turns and steps, choreographed by the couple. This meant that couples had nearly complete freedom to put together their own steps for this element.

That season, Natalia Kaliszek and Maksym Spodyriev of Poland performed their partial step sequence to a foxtrot rhythm, and the ISU liked it so much that they decided to make it a pattern dance that all couples would be able to do. This dance, of course, is the Tea-Time Foxtrot. This is one of three new dances the ISU recently decided to introduce, the others being Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier's Maple Leaf March from the same season and Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean's Rhumba D'Amour from the 1993-94 season. Initially, the plan was to introduce all three of these dances at some point during the four seasons leading up to the 2022 Olympic Games, but given that the patterns from this past season are now being reused for the 2020-21 season, it's unclear how soon we'll be seeing these other dances.

Even though the Tea-Time was created for a senior team that placed 14th in the short at the 2016 World Championships, this dance was required for all junior couples to perform. This is because Kaliszek and Spodyriev are still competing, and making this dance a requirement at the senior level would obviously give them an unfair advantage. As a result, this dance became a real challenge for the juniors. There are several couples who struggled to maintain the timing of the dance, potentially finishing the pattern two to four beats later than they should, or even more. Also, given the nuanced nature of the dance's timing, it's very difficult to tell when to pick up the dance after a timing issue or an interruption, leading to even more issues with timing. While this certainly wasn't the case for every couple, it wasn't a walk in the park for anyone. Here's how it went down.

Level 4s

There were 14 couples who received a level 4 for the first section (essentially the first half) of the Tea-Time. Their scores are compared here to the benchmark values for grade of execution. For example, a score of 6.55 means the couple got an average GOE mark of +2.

For the second section, only three couples received a level 4, each of them only achieving it once.

81 couples competed across the entire Junior Grand Prix series, the Youth Olympics, and the Junior World Championships this past season. Altogether, that's 170 performances of the Rhythm Dance. Across these competitions, a level 4 was achieved in the first Section of the dance by 14 couples, an overall total of 17 times. The three couples to get a level 4 twice during the season were Elizaveta Shanaeva and Devid Naryzhnyy, Avonley Nguyen and Vadym Kolesnik, and Diana Davis and Gleb Smolkin. In the second Section, only three teams achieved a level 4, each of them achieving it only once. Just two teams, Shanaeva and Naryzhnyy and Katarina Wolfkostin and Jeffrey Chen, received a level 4 for both Sections in the same performance.

The scores of all the level 4 Sections range from 6.78 to 5.65, with all of them receiving positive grades of execution. Nguyen and Kolesnik have the highest-scored section out of these couples, achieving it in Section 1 of the of the pattern at Junior Worlds. Five judges gave them a +2 for GOE, while the other four judges gave them +3s. The highest score for Section 2, 6.70, was achieved by both Nguyen and Kolesnik, at JGP Baltic Cup in Poland, and Shanaeva and Naryzhnyy at Junior Worlds. In both cases, the couples received three +3s, five +2s, and a +1 from the judges.

Out of the 81 junior couples competing in a major international, only 14 received a level 4 on the first Section, or approximately 17.3%, and no couple achieved it more than twice. The 3 couples that executed a level 4 Section 2 make up only 3.7% of the teams. If we base these percentages off of the 170 performances instead of the couples, we would see that a level 4 Section 1 was achieved 10% of the time, while for Section 2, it is only about 1.8%.

What's interesting to note about these scores is how they compare to the scores of couples who received a lower level. For example, the highest score received by a team for a level 3 Section 1 was 5.80, which was achieved by Wolfkostin and Chen, Sofya Tyutyunina and Alexander Shustitskiy, and Loïcia Demougeot and Théo Le Mercier. Out of all 14 couples who got a level 4 throughout the season, only one received a lower score than 5.80. Another couple, Ekaterina Katashinskaia and Alexandr Vaskovich, got a level 4 with a score equal to the highest level 3 score, with a base value of 5.50 and an added GOE score of 0.30. The couples with the highest score for a level 3 all got a base value of 4.75, with an added GOE of 1.05, or an average of +2s from the judges. What this all means is that even though the judging panel thought the sections performed by the couples who got a level 3 were executed better, Katashinskaia and Vaskovich were able to score equally as well by doing all of their key points correctly.

I think this is an example of the imperfections of the current system of evaluation. While the judging panel evaluates the entire pattern and watches for factors like edge depth, effortlessness, flow, holds, and unison, the technical panel evaluates whether or not small sections of steps and turns, these being key points, are executed correctly. As far as the impact on a couple's score, it seems that the key points, and therefore the level, are the biggest deciding factor. While I definitely don't mean to say "This couple should have scored higher than this other couple," I'd like to see the strength of the entire section of the pattern have more of an impact on the score for the element.

Spread of Levels

While looking at the teams who received level 4s, we could see there was a big difference in the number of times they achieved it in Section 1 and Section 2. However, there's also a similar drop for the number of times a team got a level 3. This drop goes from 33 times to 19. What I think is especially interesting is that there is a rather large increase of times a team received a level 2 on Section 2, compared to Section 1. This jump goes from 45 to 71, enough times for almost all 81 couples to receive a level 2 once. From this, we can tell that for the most part, teams had a harder time with the second half of the dance than the first, and with the requirements that have to be met to achieve a high level in the second half, this is not too surprising.

Essentially, the level of a section is determined by the correct or incorrect execution of four predetermined sequences of steps or turns. These are the "key points" the technical panel looks for. For the second section of the Tea-Time, the third key point is the lady's outside bracket. The fourth is the bracket the man does at the same time as the lady, along with his crossover, change of edge, and twizzle. These are arguably the two most difficult key points in the entire pattern, and if neither of the partners in a couple get their bracket called, their second section can not be given more than a level 2. By looking at the protocols from each of these competitions throughout the season, it's clear that the bracket was generally what kept teams from getting a higher level on the second section. In fact, out of the 18 couples who competed at the Junior Grand Prix de Courchevel in France, there was not a single skater who got their bracket called, meaning no couple got higher than a level 2. When comparing this to the levels received for the first section, where levels were somewhat fairly spread out from 1 to 4, the downward shift is obvious.

Comparing the rather evenly distributed spread of level for Section 1 to Section 2 shows a clear difference in how each half was evaluated across the whole event.

Comparing Levels By Couple

Another way to compare the execution of each section is to look at what each team got for levels within the same performance. To do this, We can subtract the level a couple gets for Section 2 by their level for Section 1 and use the result to determine the change. For example, at the Junior Grand Prix Lake Placid in the US, Nguyen and Kolesnik received a level 4 for the first section and a level 2 for the second. If we take their Section 2 level, a 2, and subtract their Section 1 level, a 4, we would have the result of -2. This means that Nguyen and Kolesnik dropped two levels from their first section to their second. Naturally, a positive result would mean that a couple improved their level between sections, and a zero means that there was no change in what their level was. For the purpose of this comparison, a Base level is considered a zero and a no value section is a negative one.

For the most part, each couple had better success with their first section than their second. On average, each team had a drop of about .218 levels within each performance. However, there were still a couple competitions where couples, on average, had a higher level for their second section, which were JGP Lake Placid, JGP Chelyabinsk in Russia, JGP Baltic Cup, and the JGP Final. It should be noted that at two of these events, in Lake Placid and Gdansk, there was one couple at each event who had an uncharacteristic fall in the first section that brought their level down to a base, even though they each received enough key points to get a level 1 or 2.

I also looked at the average change in levels for each couple across the season. Out of all 81 couples, only 38 decreased on average within the program. 21 couples generally had a stronger second section than their first, and the 22 remaining couples received levels that, on average, stayed the same. The greatest increase between each half of the dance was 2 levels, achieved by Anya Lavrova and Maxwell Gart as well as Ayumi Takanami and Yoshimitsu Ikeda. However, each of these couples only competed at one major international this season. 2 other couples, Svetlana Lizunova and Alexander Vakhnov as well as Angelina Lazareva and Maksim Prokofiev, had an average drop of 3 levels from their first sections to their second. Like Lavrova and Gart and Takanami and Ikeda, these couples only competed at one major international.

Whether it be an average increase or decrease throughout the season, most couples did not have a dramatic shift from their first section to their second. There were only 10 couples in total who had an average shift of more than one level. This means that whatever level a team got for the first section, their second section usually got a similar level, and while many teams tended to have a stronger first section than their second, it was not by an overwhelming margin.

That's essentially what I have to say! I originally had a whole lot of information on this pattern that I put together and I'm glad I could condense most of it into a much more graspable summary. What are your thoughts? Do you have a strong opinion on the evaluation of key points in relation to the whole pattern? Do you think the key points for this dance are fair for the junior level? Let me know in the comments!

Wishing all the best to you and your loved ones,
-TJ

Explaining This Year's Key Points: Junior

Happy New Olympic Cycle!

It's the start of a season, which means it's time for a new pattern dance to be performed in this year's ice dance programs and, of course, new rules. One of the most notable changes this season is that the "Short Dance" event will now be called the "Rhythm Dance". This is because the ISU is making an effort to highlight that this program is an interpretation of a required style of dance, rather than just a shorter Free Dance. This season, the required rhythm for both junior and senior-level couples is the tango. Each couple has the choice to either perform just a tango or a tango along with any other rhythm they choose. The pattern dances that will be performed this season are the Tango Romantica by the senior teams and the Argentine Tango by the juniors. In this post, I'm going to explain key points that are used in the judging for the junior event. If you find this helpful, I'll make another post for the seniors. I hope you enjoy and learn something!

For those of you who do not know, key points are small groups of steps in a pattern dance that are used to determine the technical difficulty of the pattern a couple performs. You can think of key points as positions in a spin or features in a step sequence. Key points must be performed with completely correct steps, clean edges, and perfect timing. In the past, one section or pattern was judged with 3 key points. This season, that number has increased to 4. If all 4 key points are cleanly executed and in time with the music, and every step in the section is performed, the couple receives a level 4. If the couple gets 3 key points, they get a level 3. 2 key points get a level 2, and so on. If no key points are awarded, the couple gets a base level. However, the couple still needs to perform the entire section of the dance. If the element is interrupted due to a fall or stumble for up to 4 beats, the level is reduced by 1. This element would be marked with a "<" sign. If the element is interrupted for more than 4 beats but 75% percent of the steps are still completed, The level is reduced by 2. This would be shown with a "<<" sign. If the couple performs less than 75% of the pattern, no level is given, and it would be marked as "!".

That’s it in terms of general rules. Here are the key points for this year’s junior Rhythm Dance.

As you can see, the dance is divided into two sections. Couples may start with either section as long as the next section is performed immediately after the first. For Section 1, the couple must not miss more than 5 steps to get credit for the element. For Section 2, the couple can’t miss more than 3.

Section 1

Key Point 1: Lady’s Steps 7-10

The lady must perform a left forward outside edge followed by a cross-in-front right forward outside edge, cross-behind left forward inside edge, change to an outside edge, and perform the same cross-behind change of edge on the other foot. The technical specialist will judge this key point and look for correct edges and correct change of edges.

Key Point 2: Man’s Steps 7-10

The man will perform the same steps as the lady, except the final step of the key point is not a change of edge; it is a right forward inside counter. Skaters can have a very hard time with the exit edge of this turn. They may easily skate it on a flat edge and even scratch on their toe pick. The assistant technical specialist will watch for correct edges, a correct change of edge, and a correct counter turn.

Key Point 3: Lady’s Steps 13-15

The lady starts with a cross roll right forward outside three-turn, pushes back into a left backward outside, and finishes by stepping forward on to a right forward outside. Getting a clean turn can be a tough part for the lady, so this could be a big factor in who gets this called clean. The technical specialist will look for correct edges and a correct turn.

Key Point 4: Man’s Steps 13-15

The man will do a cross roll left backward outside edge, step into a right forward outside three turn, and finish with a left backward outside edge. This can be a pretty difficult key point for the man because he needs to execute a true cross roll, not just step back on to his edge. Also, the man can easily lose control on his three turn. The assistant technical specialist will look for correct edges and a correct turn.

Section 2

Key Point 1: Lady’s Steps 23-24

The lady starts with a left forward outside swing roll and immediately after performs a twizzle-like motion on the same foot. She finishes by stepping forward onto a right outside edge. The twizzles can be very difficult, as the lady must not change onto her inside edge before turning. Also, this turn makes no sense on paper. If the skater does one entire rotation, she will end up with her feet right next to each other, and she’s won’t be able to push for her next edge, however, she can’t end the turn on the backward part of the turn, because she would not be completing the turn. What she should aim to do is turn for about three quarters of a whole revolution. The technical specialist will look for correct edges and a correct twizzle turn.

Key Point 2: Man’s Steps 23-24

The man will do a left forward outside swing roll with the lady and then perform an open choctaw. He will have to bring his right foot directly to his left instep and skate on a right backward inside edge to get this called clean. He also needs to make sure he doesn’t “jump” from one foot to the other. The man finishes the key point with a left backward outside edge. The assistant technical specialist will look for correct edges and a correct choctaw turn.

Key Point 3: Lady’s Steps 27-31

The lady will perform five cross rolls, starting on her left backward outside edge. These are very difficult to perform correctly, as the she must shift her weight easily from one foot to the other, instead of just stepping through each cross roll. Her final cross roll will include a swing roll and step forward onto her right inside edge. This is a very quick step that should start between counts 4 and 1. Many skaters rush this step and begin it on beat 4, which is incorrect. The technical specialist will assess correct edges in this key point.

Key Point 4: Man’s Steps 27-31

The man performs five cross rolls, starting on his right forward outside edge. The final cross roll is performed with a swing roll. A common error in this key point is stepping on flat edges and then rolling onto an edge, instead of stepping on and maintaining a clear outside edge. The assistant technical specialist will watch this and look for correct edges.

So that’s it! I hope something I said stuck with you. If this was helpful I’ll post something similar for the senior-level couples. Happy watching!

-TJ