Dance Skating - The Quickstep

Moving along in our tour of the dance skating world, I thought it was time to look at one of the most exciting and traditional skate dances - the Quickstep.  Based on the ballroom quickstep that became popular in the 1920s, the skate dance quickstep first made an appearance in the 1930s.  As one of the older dances, it is performed in ice, and in roller, with both American and International styles.  For all of these variations the steps remain the same, but the tempo changes.  In ice and international roller, the dance is skated to 112bpm, while the American variation is relatively slower at 100bpm (trust me, that is still plenty fast!).




Here are some examples of the dance being skated in the International style as a team:

(This first video you may have to click twice to watch on YouTube as embedding seems to be disallowed.)

And here are some international variations being skated solo (as it will be competed this year):

Here are some examples of the dance being skated in the American variation:

And here is an example from the ice:

In roller, the Quickstep is performed American style in the Senior Solo Dance event, and is in the RSA #15 Gold Medal Dance Test for Team and Solo.  The International style is skated in the World Class division for both team and solo (though it has been quite a few years since it has been used for team), and is also skated in the RSA #12 Gold Medal Dance Test for Team and Solo.

(Also, as a side note, Happy Pi Day!)