Go For Gold: The Phenomenal Torvill and Dean Quiz

Answer: Nottingham

Specifically, they skated at the Nottingham Ice Stadium.

By 1975, almost seventeen-year-old Jayn Torvill and fifteen-year-old Christopher Dean were already experienced competitors. Chris had won the British Primary Championships and the Junior Dance Championships with Sandra Elson, while Jayne and her first partner, Michael Hutchenson, were Junior Champions and then runners up at the seniors before winning the British Championship.

According to Chris, it was his stepmother who first suggested to his father that he should be paired with Jayne, since they were both currently without partners. Mr. Dean took some convincing, as did skating champion turned coach Janet Sawbridge, but in the end, with the agreement of Mr. And Mrs. Torvill, what would prove to be an inspired piece of skating matchmaking was made.

The chemistry between Jayne and Chris was apparent almost at once, though it would take years of unrelenting work and dedication to refine it into the signature Torvill and Dean magic.

"Within a few months we were placed in a couple of club competitions, and began to look ahead. First we would take the inter-gold-medal test... which was the exam requirement for national competition set by the National Skating Association. We had to have it to enter the 1976 British championships.

"Along the way, Janet said she was putting us forward for selection for two competitions in Europe, in Oberstdorf...Germany, and St Gervais, in France...long-established stepping-stones for would-be senior competitors on the route to major international championships." ("Facing the Music" p.p. 35-6)

As for the Nottingham Ice Stadium, in 1993 construction began on a new national ice center to replace the old stadium. The new facility opened in 2000, with the surrounding area named Bolero Square in honor of Torvill and Dean and their achievement.

Answer: St. Gervais, France

Having been together for less than a year, Jayne and Chris earned their first trophy in 1976 at the Northern Championships in St. Gervais, France, after having come in an unexpectedly strong second the previous week at their first-ever international competition at Oberstdorf, Germany; these being the international competitions Janet Sawbridge had entered them for when they began training with her. They won at St. Gervais despite Chris being terribly ill with food poisoning.

Young as they were, they traveled alone, since they didn't have enough money for Janet to come with them and their parents had to work. But they managed airports and trains and strange, foreign food. Had they known it, this was only the first of uncounted trips they would make together over the next thirty-five-plus years.

Both Jayne and Chris were past the age cutoff for junior skating competition. Accordingly, when they began training with Janet they began:

"work on the elements needed both for national and international competitions. These elements, as defined by the International Skating Union, were to govern our skating lives for the next nine years, and are still at the heart of amateur ice-dancing. They are:
The 'compulsories' - with rigidly set steps. The demands are highly technical, the skating equivalent of piano scales. There were nine of them at that time, three being selected for performance just before competition...
An Original Set Pattern (OSP)... in which you dance your own steps to a set tempo, like a rumba or a paso doble. The tempo is set a year in advance.
A Free Dance - four minutes of music and dance-steps of your own choice. Here you are limited only by the time, and other rules governing holds, lifts, numbers of separations and the amount of time spent apart during the separations." (From "Facing the Music" p. 36-7)

Beyond the rigors of skating itself, the other reality that rules an amateur ice skater's life is the calendar.

"First in the skating season came the British National Ice-Dance Championships in November, traditionally held in Nottingham. The European championships, held in a different city every year, followed in January, with the World championships in March. In addition, every four years, the Olympics slotted into the schedule in February. It's a gruelling round, for which you have the summer to prepare. You skate the same programme in each competition, because you have time to make only minor changes. And many of the judges make the same circuit, building up their opinions of performers and performances. This fact, and the tightness of the timing, mean that you have to look at the three competitions (or four, if you include the Olympics) as a unit: the international skating year." ("Facing the Music" p. 37)

Answer: 1978

They won with a dance primarily using Richard Rodgers' "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue". Since they were ranked third, their win came as something of a surprise at the time. In hindsight, though, it was perhaps a foreshadowing of things to come.

The winners of a competition such as the British Championship are not the only couple to advance. The second and third place skaters also go on to the next fixture in the competition calendar. . So, though 1978 was the first time Jayne and Chris became British champions, it was not the first time they made the trip to the Europeans.

In 1977, they placed third in the nationals, earning them a place in Strasburg the following January. The winners of that competition were a Russian couple, Irina Moiseyeva and Andrei Minenkov. As young skaters, Jayne and Chris all but idolized Moiseyevaand Minenkov, with there aloof poise. They were, however, particularly struck by the music the Russians skated to:

"They came from a tradition totally different from the false, staid, uptight ballroom background that was familiar to us, the postures and steps that had dominated ice-dancing for a decade... Their background was the Bolshoi and Russian folk dancing. But it was more than that. Here were two people who were obviously a man and woman in a relationship, with a story to tell. And they were dancing to bits of "West Side Story" - still extracts, cut together with the usual variety of rhythm, but at least the extracts all came from the same source.

We found it breathtaking. But it would take quite a while yet to absorb what we had seen, and incorporate it into our work."
...
"That was also where we first saw another couple who were to become important for us, the Hungarians Krisztina Regoeczy and Andras Sallay... We noticed them because of the way he would give her a little kiss just before they went on the ice. It set a mood, a link between them that carried through their performance. It had never occurred to us that the dance starts before the music, that it starts when the audience - and the judges - first see you." ("Facing the Music" p. 47)

Answer: Betty Callaway agreed to coach them and they met Bobby Thompson and Courtney Jones.

In the spring of 1978, Janet Sawbridge retired from coaching for personal reasons, leaving Jayne and Chris feeling confused and abandoned. They had finished the 1977-78 skating year with an eleventh place finish at the Worlds. But they were still young enough to be at a loss without the guidance of a coach.

Later that year, an ice skating judge named Pam Davies suggested they ask the internationally renowned trainer Betty Callaway to take them on. Betty had experience and contacts that would prove invaluable. Among these contacts were two people Chris and Jayne would come to esteem as mentors and value as friends.

"Although we already knew Courtney and Bobby to say hello to, we were first introduced to them formally back in 1978, shortly after teaming up with Betty. As well as performance, she was keen for us to improve our presentation...and had suggested a meeting with Courtney. A four-time world ice dancing champion, Courtney was also a costume designer of some repute. He and Bobby - who, like Betty, was an extremely well-respected coach, mentoring the great John Curry, among others - had been partners for many years and lived in a flat in Bayswater. Our first meeting there was an auspicious occasion that will be etched on our memories for all time." ("Our Life on Ice" p. 51)

Though Jayne briefly had ballet lessons as a child, it wasn't till after they began working with Betty Callaway that she and Chris became seriously interested in ballet and contemporary dance and started working with the Contemporary dancer Gideon Avrahami. It was also thanks to Betty that they spent two weeks in Budapest, where they worked with ballet instructor Zoltan Nagy. The pieces were coming together. They began to want not just to perform standard ballroom dance steps and prescribed skating moves, but to mold their ice dancing to their own personalities and vision.

Answer: 1980 in Lake Placid, USA

Chris and Jayne's first Olympic competition was at Lake Placid, where they came in fifth. The same year, they had a fourth place finish in the worlds. Doing so well in their first Olympics (only two places out of medal contention) is what gave them the impetus to quit their jobs and begin training full time.

The decision was a particularly difficult one for Chris, who had a good job as a policeman. But a talk with the then Chief Constable of Notinghamshire, Mr. Charles McLachlan, settled his doubts. "And the rest, as they say, is history".

Answer: Mack and Mabel

"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." (Wikipedia)

Though they had shown flair and individuality before, notably with their rumba to "Red Sails in the Sunset", it was 1982's "Mack and Mabel" routine where they blossomed as storytellers on ice. As Clive James said, "This wasn't dancing on ice it was ice dancing, a different thing."

A show's overture typically includes the entire score in miniature, with all its variety of mood, style and tempo. As such, it fits the requirements for long program. At the same time, as a coherent unit, the piece allows for coherence in the choreography and structure within the routine being skated to it. This in turn gave Chris and Jayne scope to incorporate storytelling and dramatic tension into the routine in a way that was not possible with a string of unrelated musical fragments.

Another vital part of the growing, evolving magic was eye contact.

"Courtney summed up the conversation perfectly.
"'Ice dancers never make eye contact with each other because they're too busy skating. The moment you get over that and begin to engage with one another, the mood changes. A reality takes hold; something which transcends technique. Then and only then will the audience become totally yours.' That conversation took place in 1981 while we were rehearsing 'Mack & Mabel' and 'Summertime', our original set pattern (OSP) for that season. Take away eye contact from either dance and you take away its heart." ("Our Life on Ice" p. 54)

At the same time, using a relatively obscure show like "Mack and Mabel" as opposed to a well-known one such as "West Side Story" meant they had no expectations to live up to or preconceptions to break. They could be totally themselves for the first time, bringing together all the pieces to create something new and unique..

The other three choices are also titles of Jerry Herman musicals.

Answer: A day at the circus

Skated to Mark Bramble's music, arranged especially for Jayne and Chris by Mike Reed, "Barnum" takes us to the circus with all its excitement and energetic physicality - tightrope walkers, trapeze artists, clowns, they're all there. The routine finishes with Jayne vaulting over Chris' head.

Answer: 1982

The first performance of "Barnum" in November of 1982 met with enthusiastic applause from the audience in Chris and Jayne's hometown, Nottingham and impressively high marks from the judges. All nine of them gave the routine 5.9 for Technical Merit and eight gave 5.9 for Artistic Impression with one6.0.

Some changes were made to the routine throughout the competition season, as often happens. At the World Championships in Helsinki, Finland in March 1983, they again received a standing ovation from the audience, while all nine judges gave them scores of 5.9 for Technical merit and 6.0 for Artistic Impression. Such a thing had never happened before. The Torvill and Dean magic was fully mature and ready to blossom into Olympic gold.

Answer: 1984 in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia

In 1984, Sarajevo was in Yugoslavia, a country established as a monarchy after the First World War and reorganized as a communist state after the Second World War, encompassing the Twenty-first Century nations of Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. Circumstances were grim, as they were at that time throughout the entire Communist or Eastern Bloc. Chris and Jayne remember guards who all seemed about seven feet tall, carrying Kalashnikovs. And yet, the most touching anecdotes in either of their books involve the people of Sarajevo and their embrace of these British ice-dancers.

"The thing that really inspired us was the last practice, which took place on the morning of the final: Tuesday 14 February 1984 - Valentine's Day. We were due on the ice at 6 am... The fact that everyone else had stayed in bed was in many ways the icing on the cake. We'd have complete privacy.

"As soon as we finished the run-through, which had gone well, we suddenly started to hear applause. Slightly taken aback, we looked round and there on the other side of the rink were 30 or so cleaning ladies, who'd obviously decided to down tools and watch. Why not? There they all stood, cigarettes in mouths, clapping like mad. We greeted their applause with a selection of bows, curtsies and a few grateful waves before skating off to get changed, both of us grinning from ear to ear. It was a wonderful moment - a spontaneous boost and a good omen, we thought. With luck it would set the tone for what was to come." ("Our Life on Ice" pp. 96-7)

What's more, Sarajevo remembered them thirty years on.

"The invitation to go back to Sarajevo came about through the mayor of the city. They're going to be hosting the 2017 Youth Olympics and that gave them an excuse to completely renovate the Zetra stadium, which had been badly bombed during the Bosnian War of the 1990s. As the 30th anniversary of the Sarajevo Olympics approached, they got in touch and said that they'd like to mark the opening of the new ice rink by commemorating 'Bolero'. Our first thought was, Wow, has it really been 30 years? ...Then we thought what an absolutely brilliant idea - to recreate 'Bolero', 30 years to the day after it happened in the same city, on the same site even. It was an amazing yet frightening idea.

"Logistically it was going to be a nightmare. We were right in the middle of filming "Dancing on Ice" and were soon to go out on tour... We didn't have to go to Sarajevo. As we were told, it was just an invitation. But to us it was more than that: it was an opportunity to give something back to the city; a city which today experiences problems of a different kind, swapping civil war and unrest for poverty and mass corruption. It's a beautiful but desperate place. But the closer we got to the event the more daunting it all became. Not least the question of whether we'd be in a fit state to perform the full routine...

"Going back to Sarajevo was an extremely emotional experience, for all kinds of reasons, and not all to do with gold medals and perfect scores; not by any means. For instance, the area where the opening ceremony had taken place, which was still there, had later been used as a kind of outdoor morgue during the war, often housing thousands of dead bodies. We were just as aware of the other side of the coin. Definitely a bittersweet experience.

"Aesthetically, the city was almost unrecognisable. The grey concrete Soviet buildings which had marred every horizon had been replaced by newer, more welcoming structures. Sarajevo is a city of contrasts, of extremes. We remember going into the Old Town while we were last there, which has an almost medieval feel to it, with beautiful buildings, all perfectly preserved. Then, just a street away, you'll see some horrible throwback to the Soviet era, fortunately now a dying breed in the city. Despite its troubles you can tell that it's doing its best to drag itself fully into the twenty-first century. It's almost there.

"But it was the reception we received from the people that brought a lump to our throats. They seemed genuinely thrilled to see us again, as we were them, and it turned out to be a very happy few days. Somebody who lived in the city said to us that it reminded them all that good things happen, and heaven knows they needed reminding. What better way to celebrate the 30th anniversary of 'Bolero' than to be part of something positive again? ...

"The most emotional part of that visit was meeting the flower girl again. Anybody who was watching Bolero on TV, or has since seen it on DVD or You Tube, will probably remember that just before we took to the ice, a small girl had to skate on to clear the ice of some bouquets that had been thrown on. We were standing there, waiting to be announced. She's 36 now, so would obviously have been about six at the time, and has a daughter of her own who also skates. She was so overcome; in floods of tears. Much of what has gone on in Sarajevo since 1984 has given little cause for celebration, save for the end of the war, of course. She, like everyone else, had had a difficult life. For her, she said, that memory from 1984 was by far her happiest. When a 36-year-old woman with a young family has to go back 30 years for her happiest memory, it makes you realise just how lucky you are." ("Our Life on Ice" pp. 100-3)

Answer: True

Torvill and Dean became the highest scoring ice dancers of all time (for a single free style dance routine) receiving three 5.9s and six 6.0s for technical merit and an unprecedented nine6.0s for artistic impression after skating to an adaptation of Maurice Ravel's "Bolero".

Answer: An adaptation of "Bolero" By Maurice Ravel

They first presented "Bolero" at the British championships in November 1983, where they won. The routine was well received, but since the British championships are held in Nottingham, they were playing to the hometown crowd and, thus, couldn't gauge the routine's true impact. That would have to wait till January, at the European championship in Budapest.

Using one musical selection for the free style dance was unprecedented. So was that dance telling a story. But, after "Mack and Mabel" and "Barnum", Jayne and Chris felt they couldn't go back to the old way of patching together different fragments of music and unrelated moves.

So, though by tradition the Olympic free style dance was skated to four different musical selections during the course of a maximum time of four minutes and ten seconds, Jayne and Chris danced to just one selection, one they had been using in practice for some time. That decision, together with their experience with "Mack and Mabel" and Barnum", led inevitably to the idea of telling a story with the dance. But there was a major problem. "Bolero" runs seventeen minutes. Olympic rules restrict the free style dance to no more than four minutes and ten seconds. Though the musicians they worked with, composer Richard Hartley and arranger Bob Stewart worked miracles, they could only get the piece down to four minutes and twenty-eight seconds.

It was Chris who had the idea of letting the rules work for them rather than against them. The time begins when the skaters' blades touch the ice, not when the music begins. Starting their routine on their knees would buy them that extra eighteen seconds. Doing so also gave a dramatic opening to the story the dance told, a fanciful and flamboyant one, but no more so than those of many ballets.

"There was something else unique about our routine that would prove to be absolutely pivotal. As we were dancing to just one piece of music, we decided to create our own original narrative, a storyline to run alongside the music. This would help us to generate the emotion needed as well as aid our concentration. You wouldn't normally do this when dancing to four pieces of music as it would be far too complicated. Once again it would be a first, but a very useful one. The storyline itself isn't too dissimilar to 'Romeo and Juliet': a man and a woman, desperately in love, who ultimately cannot be together.

"At the start of the routine they're simply two young lovers courting, blissfully unaware of the fate that awaits them. Then, slowly, they begin to realise that their love for one another is doomed and that the only way they can be together is in death. They then search for the path leading to a volcano. When they find the path the woman beckons the man to follow her. As the path becomes difficult, the man helps her by lifting her higher, but eventually she becomes tired and collapses. The man picks her up and urges her to go on. Then, at last, they reach the summit and, as the music reaches its final fortissimo, they throw themselves into the volcano." ("Our Life on Ice" pp. 89-90)

"You can't understand the story from the dance. But it was in our minds, and we wanted it to be in our bodies, our faces, our eyes, as we danced. The narrative drive gave us a sense of purpose, and we hoped that the audience would feel it as well." ("Facing the Music" p. 104)

Answer: Iris purple

"Although Courtney designed every one of our costumes since 1981, including those for 'Mack & Mabel', 'Barnum', 'Paso Doble' and 'Face the Music', the most famous costumes he ever created for us were those we wore for 'Bolero' - a design, in our minds, of absolute genius and as memorable as the performance itself. The reason we use the word genius isn't just because of their aesthetic qualities, although that alone would put them pretty close. It's the fact that they were designed with the music and the choreography in mind - a concept we hadn't appreciated until we met Courtney and Bobby. But instead of these costumes simply 'complementing' the routine, they actually enhanced it, such was the almost forensic knowledge and appreciation of the designer. The only input we had was colour, which we chose because of Chris's admiration for the iris. " ("Our Life on Ice" P. 52)

"'I suppose one has a visual picture of a complete performance,' Courtney says. 'The music inspires the dance, but the music also inspires the costume. Because the music was very flowing, we wanted to find something that would flow equally as well.'

"The problem was that the silk chiffon only came in a solid colour, not in the shaded ombre effect that Courtney wanted. So they hung the fabric from a string in their basement, with a bucket of purple dye underneath, and every few hours they would pull it out a little bit more, leaving the bottom darker than the top.

"And the wooden spoon, previously used to stir the casserole they'd had for dinner, was pressed into service as a dye-stirrer. It's one of the few souvenirs of that period to have survived...in Courtney and Bobby's collection - and it's still purple."*

*("Torvill and Dean: The birth of the Olympic-winning Bolero routine" By Eleanor Oldroyd BBC presenter January 22, 2014 at
https://www.bbc.com/sport/winter-olympics/25833434

Answer: The color of their costumes

Chris told "The Guardian" in 2014 that "romantic colours were unusual in competition at the time." Still, though it was striking and memorable, I doubt the iris purple color was unprecedented in Olympic skating history. Certainly, it was the least revolutionary aspect of "Bolero," which is saying a lot.

Answer: No

Though the other components of the program are fixed to all intents and purposes, Jayne and Chris still found ways to approach them with originality and verve.

"Bolero, though, was only half the problem. At the same time, we had the compulsories to work on, and the original set pattern, a paso doble, for which we chose a Rimski Korsakov piece, 'Capriccio Espagnol', rearranged again by Bob. Even the compulsories, in which you do three patterns of the same dance, needed some hint at originality. We decided that if we could not alter the steps we had to perform on the ice, we could at least alter our holds and upper-body positions. No one had done that before. Originality always entails risk, but Betty, Bobby and Courtney agreed it was fine, that it was actually good for ice-dancing to loosen up the constraints. After all, it was an ordeal for the judges and the audience to sit through dozens of versions of exactly the same music and exactly the same movements.

"The paso was a greater challenge. In origin, it represents a bullfighter in action. In ballroom dancing, we had seen the woman mimicking the bull, with the whole dance focusing on the man, the matador, all macho stances, with arched back and head held high. But when we looked into the roots of the dance, we learned that the woman is the cape. This offered the chance to do something original, with Jayne seeming totally passive, blank-faced, the very antithesis of the traditional ice-dancing partner, yet completely a part of the dance.

"Jayne would be wearing Courtney's dramatic cape-like dress design, which was so different that we had a practice dress made so we could check the shapes she formed with her arms as we devised the steps.

"At one point in the fight, and the dance, the matador turns his back on the bull and drags the cape along behind him in a gesture of deliberate provocation. At another, Chris adapted a 'death-spiral', the move in which the woman is swung head down close to the ice, to make it look as though Jayne were a piece of fabric swept near the ground in a gesture of flamboyant macho arrogance.

"If we could capture all that, we would not only have to skate well - to seem totally inanimate while performing intricate steps is very demanding - but we would be doing something different in ice-choreography." ("Facing the Music" pp. 105-6)

Answer: A fire at the venue caused the ice to partially melt.

The World Ice Skating Championships were held in Ottawa, Canada that year. Since the newly crowned Olympic ice dancing champions were the star attraction, the competition was timed to be broadcast during prime time in Great Britain. But shortly before the scheduled start time of 4:00 P.M., a fire cut the electricity, causing the ice to begin melting. This meant the competition couldn't get under way till 8:00. The BBC and ITV stayed on the air long after their usual sign off time to cover the event. Practically the whole of the UK stayed up till 3:00 in the morning to watch Britain's sweethearts skate to their final victory as amateurs.

Information for this quiz was drawn from:
"Facing the Music: The Autobiography of Ice Dancing's Greatest Stars" by Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean with John Man; Carol Publishing Group, 1996
"Our Life on Ice" by Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean; Simon & Schuster UK, 2014
Torvill & Dean
http://www.torvillanddean.com/

With additional information from the following Wikipedia pages:
Torvill and Dean
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torvill_and_Dean
Jayne Torvill
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayne_Torvill
Christopher Dean
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Dean
National Ice Centre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ice_Centre