Ice Dancing became a major family activity at the Curling Club. It allowed for a full schedule of day and nighttime activities that would open membership to such an extent that the club could now financially sustain itself. Curing was not a high demand sport, and many people didn’t even know what it was. By itself, Curling participation was not enough to sustain the costs of a large club.
It did not take the Canadian Skating Professionals very long to drum up excitements that would enhance competitive activities for those club members whose major participation was skating. Coaches were employed. Lessons were given, and competition entered the scene.
Jean and I, were prominent among that group, and were thrilled at the challenges and enjoyment attained as we began to master fundamental and moderately complicated elements of that sport. Jean was especially happy, as Ice Dancing was an Olympic sport, and was eagerly followed by many who watched Winter Olympics on Television. In those days, Canadians and Russians dominated the Olympics, but Americans were rising fast among the competitors. She wasn’t ever going to experience the excitement of Ice Dancing in the Ice Follies, but, by golly, she could get some of her own home grown excitement right here, while she was being a wife and mother.
With that motivational background, we dove into it big time. Took lessons from Professionals and learned how to progressively work our way up the ladder of accomplishment until we were doing a lot of the complicated crossovers, and difficult direction changing, in a rhythmic manner.
Whizzing along at up to 20 miles an hour and simultaneously smoothly reversing direction, without losing balance or momentum, was not only a major accomplishment in our ice dancing, but, to my mind, it became a metaphor for what would be happening in our future life together. Ice Dancing was a very demanding, and, sometimes bruising, learning experience, but one that set the stage for many of our future life changing experiences.
Our Club never reached the competitive stage where we challenged other Ice Dancing devotee organizations. In those days there weren’t any, at least in our area. Where we did compete, was within our own club. Lots of couples in our club were up to the excitement of the learning and challenges we found in Ice Dancing.
Long hours of practice. Especially learning to anticipate, understand, and accommodate each other’s moves were critical to our competency. We learned the value of all those components as we proceeded from our worlds of solo performance of Figure Skating and rough and tumble Hockey conflict to entering the world of smooth and beautiful harmony of Ice Dancing.
When we reached the time of our first championship competition, Jean and I were well prepared. There were several couples of high performance abilities competing, and we were all pretty much alike until we reached the highest level of our capabilities. It was contained in a dance called a “Paso Doble. ” In that dance, our bodies had to proceed in a very high speed, skate back to skate back, passing maneuver, so that we went, without interruption, back and forth in opposite directions.
We were a long way from being proficient as Olympic competitors, but good enough to allow us to win our local competition and become club champions. I have included here, and appended, a Google reference to the YouTube video of the 2009 Canadian Champions doing the Paso Doble. If you want to see beauty on ice you can check it out.
Virtue & Moir – 2009 World CD – Paso Doble – YouTube
We became club champions, probably because of our Paso Doble. It became a metaphor for the kind of back and forth we would need to smoothly dance through what was coming in our future.