U.S. Ice Dancers Share Their Thoughts About Future Rhythm Dance Music and Themes
by Anne Calder | On-Ice Photos by Daphne Backman, Off-Ice Photos by Gina Capellazzi
Since it’s early history, ice dance has emphasized technical, intricate footwork and deep edges. Over the years the names and vehicles used to compete these priorities have changed.
- (1968 -1990) Couples performed Compulsory Dances set to a designated pattern plus the Original Set Pattern segment (OSP) where teams created their own dance to a specific, yearly-changing rhythm.
- (1990 – 2010) The OSP gradually became simplified and for two decades was called the Original Dance.
- (2010) The Compulsory and Original Dances were eliminated and the Short dance was created.
- (2018 – 2019) The Short Dance was renamed the Rhythm Dance, which better reflected the segment’s specific rhythms and themes selected yearly by the ISU Dance Committee.
The past six years Senior Rhythm Dance has included the following Music/Theme – Rhythm/Theme:
- 2019-2020 & 2020-2021: Music: Musicals, Operetta, Broadway
- 2021-2022: Music/Theme: Street Dance Rhythms
- 2022-2023: Music/Theme: Latin Dance Styles
- 2023-2024: Rhythm/Theme: Music and Feeling of the Eighties
- 2024-2025: Rhythm/Theme: Social Dances and Styles of the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s
- 2025-2026: Rhythm/Theme: Music and Feeling of the Nineties
At the 2026 U.S. Championships in St. Louis, MO, IDC asked the Senior Ice Dancers the following question:
If you could choose the 2026-2027 Rhythm Dance Music/Theme or Rhythm/Theme what would it be?
Emily Bratti & Ian Somerville
Emily: I would love to do a waltz…and a pattern.
Ian: I really enjoy the pattern dances. It’s really fun to do them. I know it can be quite boring for the audience to watch them. Also, the 80s theme was my favorite theme we’ve ever done, but maybe we should move on to something a little bit different because the last few years have been very showy, which is really fun to do.
Emily: I think bringing back the pattern would be amazing just because there isn’t really anyway to compare directly skating skills right now. I think that should be.
Oona Brown & Gage Brown
Oona: I honestly wouldn’t be too mad if it was tango.
Gage: I agree with tango. Technically we’re doing hip hop this season, but we love skating to tango. We loved skating to hip hop when they used to do a hip hop / blues theme. We really like that. If they would bring that back, we would not be mad at them. Like Oona said, a tango would be something cool. We always have fun with tango. A lot of people like to portray it as a very romantic dance, but we kind of portray it as a fight, similar to our Godfather free dance. We like stern, sharp, fierce genres for sure.
Christina Carreira & Anthony Ponomarenko
Christina: I would like a waltz.
Anthony: I would say tango. Overall I feel waltz is a fantastic avenue. We haven’t done one since junior, so it’s time for it. If it were to get chosen, we would be looking forward to it.
Amy Cui & Jonathan Rogers (pictured below)
Amy: We really enjoyed the hip hop kind of how creative and fun we get to be with this kind of dance style. So definitely something 2000s. I was born in 2006, so that music would be something that’s nostalgic to me. But that would be really fun to kind of explore that kind of hip hop / R&B style.
Jonathan: I completely agree. I like that 2000s, early music, that I grew up on. It really set the foundation for a lot of my dancing. I’m also pretty selfish a bit. I love Bruno Mars. I love dancing to Bruno Mars. Any sort of theme that can maybe lock that music in for us would be awesome.
Isabella Flores & Linus Colmer Jepsen
Linus: If you go with a more simplistic approach, I think we’ve seen a lot of more modern dance styles, and I think it’d be a nice change of pace to do something, maybe a bit more classical, like we haven’t seen in a while.
We actually spoke with our coach about what had been said by Coach Patrice Lauzon (I.AM). He had this idea that you have a few different pattern dances to choose from. It could be a tango, waltz, whatever you want to have, maybe four. Then each couple can decide which one they want to have their program be about.
I think that’s a really cool idea especially given that the typical complaint about rhythm dances is that it’s too much of the same. I think that would be a great idea to get some variation while still getting a good mix of classic traditional things and then something more modern.
Isabella: I like that idea as well. The past few years have been the decades. That’s been something very different, but I think a lot of us here grew up with traditional dances as kind of like a base. I would kind of be interested to see it gear back that way. There’s a lot of different dance styles out there.
Caroline Green & Michael Parsons
Michael: Waltzes! Waltzes! Waltzes! I love waltzes! I love dancing to waltzes! I love listening to Waltzes. It has to happen.
Caroline: We were watching Howl’s Moving Castle, and the waltz theme that’s in that is just, mwah. So good! It was like, Oh, it would be so nice to be able to do a waltz for once. So, we’d be excited to bring that back.
Michael: Bring back the “one foot sections” in the footwork. I think people would like that.
Caroline: I miss the pattern dance in general. Maybe patterns instead of PSt? I don’t know. I feel like having a chance to have that objective comparison between teams is really exciting and something a casual fan can really latch on to. I’ve tried to explain PSt to my parents and casual watchers, and they’re like, what? I would really like to see a waltz!
Raffaella Koncius & Alexey Shchepetov (pictured, below)
Raffaella: Honestly, I enjoy more bluesy type style programs, like a little bit more sultry. I feel like the rhythm dances the last couple of years, have been so high paced, or fast paced that it would be nice to see something at least go a slower tempo into a higher tempo and not have it so high tempo the whole time. I would like a more variety of tempo in the Rhythm Dance for next year. So I think bluesy and sultry and also it would be fun to do current music – like stuff you hear on the radio right now.
Alexey: Some more modern songs would be cool. It would also draw in more fans. I feel like it would be nice to do another blues pattern. I like the idea of patterns – like back to the old days.
Raffaella: I like the Choreo stuff, though.
Alexey: You could still do the Choreo stuff, but instead of like partial steps do one pattern. That way we can kind of combine the old and the new, and it’d be an interesting variation, I think.
Leah Neset & Artem Markelov
Leah: I honestly would love a waltz. I just love waltz.
Artem: Our Free Dance this year has a little bit of waltz in it because it’s a Napoleon and Josephine theme. We really enjoyed choreographing it and practicing it. It really feels free when you skate it out. I think fans will enjoy it as well.
Leah: I feel like the waltz really moves well on the ice. I competed waltz once in intermediate, but since then, we haven’t really done a waltz, so it would be really fun to do it.
Eva Pate & Logan Bye
Eva: People are gonna get mad at me for saying this, but I really would love a waltz. I would also love a pattern. I love doing pattern dances, and it’s really sad that we haven’t been able to do them the last few years. I feel maybe it’s a little unpopular opinion for a waltz, but I just think it’s so beautiful, and you can really work on refining your posture.
Logan: I think there’s been a lost art to the pattern dances from the old compulsories, and to have those kind of taken away the past two or three years is sad. It’s something that you do have to spend a ton of time on. So in terms of the training, it’s nice to be able to kind of let that one go a little bit. But at the same time, it’s something that is tradition that we as ice dancers were rooted in. It’s where we started from. So it would be nice to kind of see those comeback. I’m not sure if other skaters feel that way. I do think a lot of them do like the pattern dances. To keep them back in the rhythm dance would be fantastic.
Elliana Peal & Ethan Peal
Elliana: I would love an upbeat hip hop feel, but we’ve done it for so long.
Ethan: I think it would be really cool to try to approach a rhythm dance that is a little bit slower, maybe a six count tempo, like a waltz, that would maybe encourage people to do more upbeat free dances, because I feel right now everyone feels like they have to do slower free dances to complement the more upbeat rhythm. I think it could be a cool change of pace that would maybe promote some different types of free dances.
Elliana: I do think maybe adding more little, tiny spots to dance more in the rhythm dance, so as not to be so element based. It would be cool to have a mix of things.
Vanessa Pham & Anton Spiridonov
Anton: The idea of the 2000s and ’90s, ’80s, ’70s, all that, I like that, and I think it should continue. I would really enjoy skating to the 2000s, or even more recent 2010s, 2020s music. That would be really interesting to see really modern stuff. I also enjoyed the season we had Broadway.
Vanessa: Yes, I enjoyed that, too – as a junior even.
Katarina Wolfkostin & Dimitry Tsarevski (pictured, below)
Dimitry: For me, musicals. I love musicals. Definitely musicals. Bring back some musicals. I’d love it.
Katarina: I like musicals, too.
IDC: Musicals get two votes.
Emilea Zingas & Vadym Kolesnik
Emilea: I have an idea. I think that they should do a ballroom theme, and maybe it can continue for the next four years. They can have a set of five, six or seven different dance styles, and teams can pick from each of those dance styles.
So, say, we want to choose Latin or a rumba for our dance style. That’s fine. If someone wants to choose a waltz, that’s also fine. The only constraint is whichever rhythm you choose, you have to perform a partial part of a pattern that goes with that dance style. There’s a variety you can choose from. The other rule is you can’t repeat the same genre or style more than twice in four years.
So, say we pick Latin next year, the following year, we might pick a waltz. The following year, we might pick a flamenco or Paso Doble or something.
Vadym: I think my idea is not as good as that. I want to do Broadway. I remember doing that as a junior, I thought it was a really fun theme, because it opens up doors to many other themes inside of it, if you know what I mean. It’s probably going to be hard for the judges to compare apples to bananas, but it’s figure skating, I’m sorry. You can do it, everyone. Adjust.