Ice dancing is a discipline of figure skating that draws from ballroom dancing. It joined the World Figure Skating Championships in 1952….and became a Winter Olympic Games medal sport in 1976. Â As in pair skating, dancers compete as a couple consisting of a man and a woman. Ice dance differs from pair skating by having different requirements for lifts. Couples must perform spins as a team in a dance hold….where throws and jumps are disallowed. Typically, partners are not supposed to separate by more than two arm lengths….as originally, partners were supposed to be in a dance hold the entire program….though modern ice dancing has lifted this restriction somewhat. Â Another distinction between ice dance and other skating disciplines is the use of music in the performances. In ice dancing, dancers must always skate to music with a definite beat or rhythm. Â Singles and pair skaters more often skate to the melody and phrasing of their music, rather than its beat. This is severely penalized in ice dance. Â