Wikipedia:Today's featured article/February 12, 2022

Ice dance is a discipline of figure skating that historically draws from ballroom dancing. A team consists of one woman and one man. Ice dance originated as recreational social skating: couples and friends would skate waltzes, marches, and other social dances. By the early 1900s it was popular in this form around the world. The first international ice dance competition took place as a special event at the World Figure Skating Championships in 1950 in London. Ice dance was formally added to the World Championships in 1952 and became an Olympic medal sport in 1976. Dominated by British teams in the 1950s and 1960s, Soviet teams until the 1990s, and North American teams in the 2000s, the discipline lost much of its integrity as a sport in the late 1990s and early 2000s after a series of judging scandals. Ice dance has certain elements that competitors are required to perform in specific ways, including the dance lift, the dance spin, the step sequence, twizzles, and choreographic elements.