World Figure Skating Championships 2015- Ice Dance (Part 1- Freedance Groups 1&2)

The short dance at this year's Worlds was a hot mess. There were more mistakes than I've seen in a while. Some of the teams we assumed would make it to the free didn't because of their mistakes. We've seen enough of the Reeds that I assumed they would make it to the free, but their mistakes kept them from moving on.

Even though it was the middle of the night in Toronto, I was up watching the whole short dance and livetweeting (you can see those tweets here)

The first group of the freedance was a little like the short dance, but a team on the rise I really like were in that first group.

Shiyue Wang and Xinyu Liu, the Chinese dance team were quite good. They're improving in leaps and bounds. I really love their freedance, to the music of the movie "The Artist." They only barely made the freedance, in 18th place after the short and finished overall in 19th place. Not a great finish, but I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of them in the future, especially if they continue to improve the way they have been.

Groups 2 through 4 had lots of great teams. The ice dance field is pretty deep right now. And there hasn't been a clearly dominant team all season, with the retirement of both Davis and White and Virtue and Moir.

Sara Hurtado and Adria Diaz skated first in the second flight. Their short dance is my preference, they do the Spanish dances well (obviously), and their freedance, while innovative is a little too weird, and the spoken word piece they're skating to really isn't ideal. They're good enough skaters, I think they just went a little too far out of the box with their freedance to really contend, but with training partners like Papadakis and Cizeron, they're going to improve technically and in terms of performance.

Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue made the same sort of mistake that Hurtado and Diaz made. They tried to be too innovative. I love an innovative freedance, one of my favourites ever was Gilles and Porier's Hitchcock program, but there's a delicate balance between doing something interesting with the format and picking weird music. I really think that a huge part of Hubbell and Donohue's problem is the structure of the program, it could have been good, probably not great but better than it was. The last piece of music they chose is actually good skating music and would've worked better if it had been more of the program. The middle section really doesn't work and the music cut from the first track to the second is too abrupt, they don't transition well.

Federica Testa and Lukas Csolley's freedance is just not great. The theme is clear, the music choice isn't terrible, but I always get pulled out of the program when he pulls down her top, it takes me out of the program entirely and I can never seem to get back into it. They have some great elements, especially the one jaw-dropping lift in both the short and the free, which continues to catch me by surprise even now. The placement of that lift in the music of the free is perfect, but I don't enjoy the program as much as I would if not for that one element. I question a little why they thought it was a good idea. It's not necessary to the program, it doesn't serve a purpose except for shock value, and verges on prop use. It was a risky choice, and though they don't get a deduction for it, I think the program would be better without it. (I know this seems nitpicky, but it pulls me out of the program and in a lot of ways keeps me from enjoying them, and I don't think I'm the only one. If you dis/agree let me know).

Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri made a pretty terrible choice for the freedance. I can understand why they thought it might be a good idea, it worked extremely well for Jason Brown last season, but in a way that's exactly why they shouldn't have. They don't have the performance to sell the program and they don't have the stamina to maintain the necessary energy to the end of the program. Throughout the season they've looked exhausted getting close to the end (which is understandable, it's a high intensity program) and that makes it a little underwhelming. Also, that rotational lift is awful. It might be worth a little more than the variation of the same lift (grabbing the hips) we see more often, because this version is one handed, but I cringe a little every time I see it.

Alexandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin have grown on me a lot over the course of the season. Those sit twizzles are still by far the best we've seen, they're impressive and everything about the way they look as an ice dance couple is perfect. They have the right look, which might not seem like a big deal, but they have such nice lines, and they match each other perfectly. They look nice on the ice, and it helps. They also have the technical ability to back it up. They might be my favourite Russians (not my favourite team overall, but they still leave a good impression in my mind).