Who are Ice-Dance Team and Pair Team number one?

[FSWer]

Say,does anyone know who the first Ice-Dance Team and Pair Team ever formed were?

[Ellyn]

Jackson Haines and Frank Belazzi. One of them was dressed as a bear.

Seriously, how do you define "ice dance team" and "pair team"? People have been skating together . . . well, figure skating together . . . at least since the 19th century, sometimes in teams of two. Waltzing on ice started to gain popularity in Vienna in the 1880s. Competitions started informally and didn't become part of the World Championships until the 1950s. Are you looking for the first couple who danced on ice together, or the first team formed to compete, or anything in between?

The first official pair competitions were in 1906? 1908? You want the names of the teams who participated in those? Or the first time two skaters did side-by-side and assisted moves together?

[sonora]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Ellyn
[B]Jackson Haines and Frank Belazzi. One of them was dressed as a bear.

Oh my Ellyn, that's hilarious!]

[Ellyn]

Sorry, it was Franz Belazzi.

Haines was the bear, Belazzi was the trainer.

(From Nigel Brown, Ice-Skating: A History; p. 89)

Can anyone translate from German? There seems to be more information about early Viennese skating here:
http://www.wev.or.at/Frames/Wir_ueber_uns.htm

[tdnuva]

About that Viennese article...

They really dig into old times - beginning about 3000 years ago in Europe's nordic countries where someone seems to have made "blades" out of bone to skate over frozen lakes.

The nordic sagas like Friedtjof and Edda seem to include reports about skating (never heard of that before).

Written proofs start at 1200AD. Kind of ice hockey is shown on a dutch picture at around 1700.

They also think the Netherlands might be the mother country of our kind of skating - because of the "Grachten" (the canals).

First skating club: Edinburgh Skating Club 1742. But the idea came over the channel from Holland... Test for the people who wanted to join: skate a circle on each foot and jump over three stapled hats!

First book about skating from 1772 (England).

First skating club in the US: 1849 in Philadelphia.


There is no mention about dance or free-style pairs.

[FSWer]

LOL,is there an elish translation my friends for that link you posted? BTW. guys,I'm new here.

[flippet]

Originally posted by FSWer
BTW. guys,I'm new here.


New where, dear? Unless 'new' is being defined much differently than I remember?



So, uh...anyone got a picture of the bear? :D :D

[Ellyn]

Originally posted by flippet
So, uh...anyone got a picture of the bear? :D :D

Sorry, can't find a picture (keeping in mind that photography was a fairly new art ca. 1870, I don't even know that one exists).

For general on-line documentation, see:

http://www.iceskate-magazine.com/page28.html

http://www.picturehistory.com/find/p/15931/mcms.html


Also found an interesting reference here:

http://www.lib.rochester.edu/Camelot/cinder/cin8.htm

"The Gorgeous Christmas Pantomime, entitled Cinderella, or, Harlequin Prince Paragon, The Little Glass Slipper and
the Demons of the Realms of Discord, written expressly for this Theatre [Prince of Wales Theatre, Birmingham,
1877-1878] by Frank W. Green (1842-84). Birmingham, Warwickshire: J. Upton, 1877. . . .
Sc. 4: The Robin's Nest Near the
Frozen Lake. Messers. Jackson Haines and Arthur E. Mayo, the Imperial Star Champion Canadian Skaters of the World,
execute a pas de deux, along with a mazourka by the Sisters Riviere, a ballet entitled "The Meeting of the Robins."

OK, so was the pas de deux with Mayo before or after the bear performance in Vienna with Belazzi? :-) And was there ice in this theatre, or was it on roller skates?

[Ellyn]

To answer part of your question:

"The Pairs Championship began in 1908, was held in St. Petersburg and won by Heinrich Burger and FrI. Hubler of the Munich Skating Club. Apropos pair skating, it is interesting to note that in the winter of 1890—1801 “a sensation was created in ice-sport by pair skating, consisting of a man and a lady skating together”. The first pair skaters in the International Style, as distinct from the “hand-in-hand” of the Victorians in their English style, were Fri. Mathilde Obiack and Herr Victor Seybert, and Frl. Paula Steinhausen and Herr Albert Blatter of Vienna. The fashion for this delightful but exacting form of skating spread quickly, but it had to wait until 1908 before the authorities of the I.S.U. would give it official recognition."

http://www.iceskate-magazine.com/page34.html

[sonora]

Originally posted by Ellyn
To answer part of your question:

The fashion for this delightful but exacting form of skating spread quickly, but it had to wait until 1908 before the authorities of the I.S.U. would give it official recognition."

http://www.iceskate-magazine.com/page34.html

The ISU! Evil weasels once again! ;)

[annkirstin]

What exactly did the pairs (or for that matter, the singles) even do in those early skating competitions? Obviously not split triple twists or throw jumps! ;)

[loveskating]

Originally posted by sonora
The ISU! Evil weasels once again! ;)

Not necessarily...speculatively, just from the facts presented here, it could have been the English, horrified by the concept of a man and woman locked in a semi-embrace in public, who forced the ISU to refrain....wasn't England the top power in the world in 1890-1901?

[GreekGoddess85]

wow that sounds pretty funny
thanks for the link
and I though Phillippe's George of th jungle
ape guy was far fetched hehe

[AnnieD]

Originally posted by tdnuva

First skating club: Edinburgh Skating Club 1742. But the idea came over the channel from Holland... Test for the people who wanted to join: skate a circle on each foot and jump over three stapled hats!



Every time I see that the first skating club was in my city I'm 8O ! We've only got one rink now and the skating club here is tiny! It just seems so ironic that the first club was here!

[Aussie Willy]

Originally posted by sonora
The ISU! Evil weasels once again! ;)
:lol: Yes they are and Speedy was president even back then. That guy has been around forever!

[IceDanceSk8er]

Originally posted by Ellyn
Can anyone translate from German? There seems to be more information about early Viennese skating here:
http://www.wev.or.at/Frames/Wir_ueber_uns.htm

Ellyn, there's a neat website http://babelfish.altavista.com/ that allows you to paste either the text or url of a website and translate it from most languages to English. Check it out.

I often use it to play around with the minds of people who instant message me on AOL. I'll open the site, type in a comment, then translate it from English to Hungarian. :)