Boléro

Arguably, the Winter Olympic sport that's closest to pair-flying is ice dancing. Two people (check) performing a routine to music (check) during which they move around the space (check) and show intricate manoeuvres (check). Even the length of the routine (4 minutes plus or minus 10 seconds) is in the same ball park (another check). Of course it isn't exactly the same as skating on ice clearly isn't flying a kite in the sky. But you get my idea (I hope).

With that in mind, watching some of the ice dancing in Sochi in recent days inspired me with an idea for a future routine. Now of course, we have several other routines to practice, and a few more ideas in the pipeline, so this is for the mid-term future, for sometime in the next few years.

So here's the idea: what about writing a kite routine which tries to take, for as fas as possible, moves performed during an ice dance routine, and translates these into kite patterns? Ice dancers skate around, sometimes following each other, sometimes close together, sometimes twisting and turning, sometimes in parallel, sometimes doing different things and then coming together again. All of that is possible with a pair of kites in the sky ...

Now the one ice dance routine that will forever be etched in my mind is the one performed by Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean at the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics, exactly 30 years ago today. Of course, I'm talking about their famous 'Boléro' routine, where they broke and bent several of the then rules of ice dancing, and nevertheless won Olympic gold. Wouldn't it be great to write and fly a kite routine to the Boléro music, inspired by their ice dance? As you may know, the Boléro in its entirety would be way too long for a kite routine (Ravel's original version lasts more than 17 minutes), but I do have the arrangement that Torvill & Dean used in Sarajevo, which amounts to just over 4 minutes, the perfect length for a kite routine ...

And in case you want to refresh your memory, here are Torvill & Dean, 30 years ago, in Sarajevo. Enjoy.