Sibling Ice Dancers Tackle the Tango

'On the ice, we don't think of each other as brother and sister'
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 20, 2010 5:55 AM CST
Sibling Ice Dancers Tackle the Tango
Israel's Alexandra Zaretsky, right, and her brotehr Roman Zaretsky, left, perform their free dance at the ISU European figure skating championships in Tallinn, Estonia last month.   (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)

Skating the Tango Romantica with your brother or sister may sound like a nauseating concept to many people, but four of the 23 ice-dancing teams at the Vancouver Olympics will be doing just that. It takes a believable amount of sizzle between dancers to win a medal and there's ways of getting around the "ick factor," sibling skaters tell the Wall Street Journal. The tango is a compulsory part of this year's program.

"Our coach told us envision someone else's head is there," says Japan's Chris Reed, who will be skating with his sister Cathy. "It's all an act." Britain's John Kerr, who dances with his sister Sinead, says their ice tango will be more like a fight than anything with a romantic theme. The lack of romance forces them to come up with more creative roles to play, Kerr says. They once performed a routine dressed as aliens and will dress as a truck driver and hitchhiker to dance to a Johnny Cash song for one segment of this year's routine. (More tango stories.)

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