Ask IDC Q & A #1
Welcome to the first Ask IDC Question & Answer (Q&A)! Thank you for submitting all of your great questions over the past few weeks.
Who decides which rhythms/patterns will be part of the rhythm dance each year?
The ISU’s Ice Dance Technical Committee determines which rhythms and pattern will be skated each season. At the World Championships in Saitama, Japan, the ISU Ice Dance Technical Committee conducted a Coaches’ Meeting and discussed the 2019-2020 Senior and Junior Rhythm and Free Dances. On April 15, the ISU released Communication #2239, which contains technical rules for the 2019/20 season. Both are great resources to learn more about the junior and senior rhythm dances for the 2019/20 season.
Why does IDC watermark their photos?
Ice-dance.com has been watermarking photos since we first opened our galleries in 2002. Photos are the property of each individual photographer, so watermarking our images allows us to easily find our photos if they are posted anywhere else on the internet. Prior to 2014, we posted the photographer name vertically going up the lower right side of the photo. After finding that our photos were appearing in magazines, without the photographer’s permission, we made the decision to change our watermark to an image that wasn’t so easily removable.
Has IDC continued to ask skaters to blog from competitions? I don’t think I saw any IDC blogs in the 2018-19 season, and I miss them. I always enjoyed reading about the skaters’ experiences/adventures, and I was impressed that the skaters are such talented writers. Hope that you will keep the blogs coming.
We miss them too! We have been incredibly lucky that so many of the competitors have been willing to share their travel adventures with us and our readers. Several of the ice dancers who have blogged for us in the past have moved on from the competitive arena, so for next season, we will be casting a net to see if there are any teams who are interested in working with us. In addition, we are hoping to do athlete social media takeovers on Instagram.
There are many other ice dances available besides the standard pattern dances. Why don’t you promote a wider range?
While our main focus is on the dances that are skated at the competitive levels, we are open to providing additional information on other ice dances. We do not currently have resources on other dances that are outside of the ISU manual, so if you have access to materials that could be shared via our website, reach out to us via our contact page.
That’s a wrap for our first Q & A! You can submit a question via our Ask IDC Q & A form. The goal is to answer a few each week, so if your question is not covered in this edition, check back next week. Some questions may require us to reach out to technical experts before we can respond, so please be patient.
Until next time,
Daphne & Team IDC