Timeless & Divine: The Magic of Torvill and Dean
Coral Drouyn talks to Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean about the end of an era, ahead of their farewell tour of Australia in 2025.
There are moments in history where we remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when they happened. Some are linked to politics, war, devastation. Occasionally they are linked to joyous, life-altering experiences. I remember where I was when I first saw Torvill and Dean dance Bolero at the 1984 Winter Olympics. I watched in awe as these two young, ridiculously wholesome and attractive athletes broke all boundaries in their quest for excellence. It was so emotional for me, even knowing nothing about Ice Dancing - or skating in general - that I started to cry silently. The pursuit of excellence has driven me ever since.
Though their stardom was instantaneous, it followed a decade of them dancing on ice together, perfecting their routines, exploring ideas for moves that had never been done before.
“Some people still think we were an overnight success,” Chris tells me with a chuckle, “but it was hard work.”
“And it still is,” Jane chimes in, “especially now our bodies are getting older.”
In their teens the pair shared a trainer and were already making waves in skating circles, though not together. Jane was already European pairs champion and Chris was British Junior Ice Dance champion. They knew each other from various competitions, then in 1975 Jane lost her skating partner, and history was made.
“Call it fate or destiny, I don’t know,” Jane says, “but I wasn’t thrilled with the idea at first. I knew Chris a little. He was a great skater - very … very …”
“Uppity? Bossy? Aloof?” Chris suggests.
“Well, you were intense,” Jane chides.
Chris laughs. “Oh yes, I was. And uppity. I thought I was going to change skating forever. That I was God’s gift to the sport.”
I refrain from stating the obvious - that he did, and he was!
“We didn’t hit it off at first,” says Jane. “I knew nothing about Ice Dancing; it’s very different to pairs skating, which has rigid set moves. Chris was experimenting with lifts and steps that no-one had ever done before, and I had no idea whether I could do them. Most of our early routines were all Chris’s ideas and I just tried to keep up.”
The miracle of how quickly their pursuit of innovation and excellence took flight is magnified by the fact that both held down full-time jobs at the time - Chris as a police officer and Jane as an insurance clerk.
“When I look back now - two kids in their late teens. It’s astonishing that we stuck to all the training,” Chris recalls.
The training meant getting up in the dark to train before work and heading straight to the ice rink after work for hours of practice. On the weekends they explored Chris’s new ideas for music and costumes.
“We had a friend who worked in the music department of the BBC,” Jane tells me. “He would let Chris and me come in and listen to new recordings, sometimes for hours.”
Chris elaborates, “It’s how we discovered the Mack and Mabel score. We wanted to create stories around the music. That hadn’t been done before. When we used the entire overture for one dance people thought we were crazy. We found music that we didn’t know existed.”
“I’m sure people who saw us practice thought we were crazy, but Chris always trusted his judgement,” Jane adds. “He knew what would work, and we started getting really big results.”
They became British Champions in 1978, and then their hometown stepped in to help its newest celebrities. The Nottingham council gave the pair a grant so that they could quit their day jobs and concentrate on skating.
“It didn’t mean we got time off,” Jane explains. “It just meant we had more time to practice.”
And that extra time saw them become world champions three times, starting with 1984. But there’s no doubt that the greatest achievement was the Gold Medal at the Sarajevo Olympics. Surely reaching that pinnacle saw them suffer a let down afterwards, with little left to achieve?
“Not so much a let-down as a … well, the realization came pretty quickly that we only had one direction left, one thing left to achieve. We had to turn professional.”
We take for granted now, an astonishing forty years later, that sports people make millions of dollars for doing what was once an unpaid recreation.
“We really didn’t know about putting on a show, working with other skaters, holding an audience and entertaining them for hours rather than minutes,” Chris explains.
“We’d never had to do that for more than a few minutes at a time,” Jane adds.
And that’s where the Australian connection was born. Chris and Jane met Sydney Dance Company founder Graeme Murphy and an amazing alliance was born. In fact, their professional careers began here.
“Graeme had this unique way of not making you do anything, but just making you WANT to do things you had never thought of before,” Jane muses.
“He so completely understood what we were trying to do,” Chris explains, “and somehow he made it all more theatrical, more exciting, for us and the audiences. It wasn’t just us out there on the ice. It was a whole team of skaters, and musicians, and costumes and stunning choreography.”
“He made us into entertainers, not just athletes,” Jane explains. “Even though he never did quite manage to tame the ice. His skating was … well …”
“As a skater he was a phenomenal choreographer,” Chris concedes and Jane laughs.
The alliance with Graeme led to a string of huge arena productions, multi-million-dollar spectaculars for the entire family.
“Suddenly we were being treated like superstars just for doing what we had always done. It took a little while to get used to,” Jane tells me.
In between productions the two pursued separate lives and managed to get married and raise families … “But not to each other,” Chris hastens to tell me.
Image: Torvill & Dean. Sarajevo 84, Credit: Getty
“People always assume we are romantically linked or have been in the past, but it’s not true,” Jane hastens to explain.
“We never even dated,” Chris concedes. “It would just have made things too difficult.”
Along the way they mentored young skaters, choreographed for their peers and started a program that helped disadvantaged kids who wanted to skate.
“There’s still so much we really want to do, but all athletes have a use by date. There are some things you just can’t fight, and one of them is age,” Chris admits.
Their latest triumph is the television series Dancing on Ice, but skating live before an audience is still their greatest love. And yes, they will be dancing together live.
“It seems right somehow that we should end it all here in Australia, where we have always felt like we belonged,” Chris says.
Except it isn’t really the end. How could it be? Magic doesn’t have a beginning or an end – and neither do Torvill and Dean.
Jane and Chris will tour Australia in June 2025.
TORVILL & DEAN: OUR LAST DANCE – 2025 AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES
Saturday 14th June – Brisbane Entertainment Centre - 7.30pm
Sunday 15th June – Brisbane Entertainment Centre 2.00pm
Wednesday 18th June – Melbourne Rod Laver Arena – 7.30pm
Thursday 19th June – Melbourne Rod Laver Arena – 2.00pm
Thursday 19th June – Melbourne Rod Laver Arena – 7.30pm
Saturday 21st June – Sydney Qudos Bank Arena – 7.30pm
Sunday 22nd June – Sydney Qudos Bank Arena – 1.00pm
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