Sunday, February 15, 2009

Torvill and Dean - Bolero still magic 25 years on

Back in the early 80s, when you weren't talking about Charles and Diana, you were talking about Torvill and Dean. Unless of course you were way too cool, hip and trendy to talk about either.

I still remember the excitement of waiting for them to unveil their routine for the next year's competitions.

At the end of 1983, I just totally refused they could ever top the daring, inventive and fast paced Barnum on Ice and wondered if they had peaked too soon, ahead of the vital 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo.

I remember feeling quite shocked by Bolero when they first performed it - it took a few times of watching it to take in the haunting beauty of the music combined with the passion and drama of the routine.

Last night ITV showed a programme to celebrate the 25th anniversry of their gold medal winning performance in Sarajevo where they achieved an unprecedented and since unbeaten maximum score. It was good to see the routine in full again, even if it was rather spoiled by Jason Gardiner talking over part of it.

This prompted a meander around their best performances on You Tube, which I'll show below. Enjoy

The first is one of what I think was their best dances, their Paso Doble for the Sarajevo Olympics which I think is brilliant, but it was rather overshadowed by Bolero......



Their lesser known but still good first world championship winning free dance to music from Fame.



From 1982 - Mack and Mabel



That incomparable Barnum routine



And, finally, Bolero



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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Cool blog. So very true. And for teh rest of this month Chris and Jayne are skating Bolero every night live in arenas around the country in the Dancing on Ice Tour. Not bad for a pair who first started skating together in 1975!

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