Dance Skating - The Starlight Waltz

It seemed about time to continue on with the tour of skate dances.  I thought that since yesterday was Valentine's Day it would be most appropriate to look at another waltz - this time the Starlight Waltz.

The Starlight Waltz is a relatively new dance, as it was adopted for competition in the 1960s.  I believe it was originally an ice dance, though it is has not been used in competition at the senior level in recent memory.  For ice, the dance is skated to a 174bpm tempo, but in roller the dance is skated to 168bpm.  Because of it's late introduction to skating in the 60s, in roller there is only an international variation to this dance.  Most of the adaptations to American style from the International and ice variations occurred before this time.




Here are some samples of the dance as seen in roller:

(You may have to click on this one twice to watch on YouTube as it doesn't like the embedding)

Here is a sample of it being skated solo (using the ladies steps) as it will be skated in competition this year:

This video is LONG, but has some great skating, though there doesn't seem to be any sound...

And here is a more recent example, from the 2010 World Championships, although the video quality isn't the best:

Here are some examples of it being skated on ice:

This is an instructional video, in case you want to learn more about the technique involved in the dance:

For roller, this dance is skated in competition at the World Class level only, but it has been used quite a bit in both the solo and team divisions in recent years.  It is also in the RSA #12 Gold Medal International Dance Test for both team and solo dance.