Just us and nature… it’s like flying without wings: Torvill and Dean on the exhilaration of performing their legendary Bolero on a frozen lake in a winter wonderland – and the terrifying moment when he went UNDER the ice

• Jayne Torvill, 63, and Christopher Dean, 62, have danced together for 45 years
• Duo traveled to Alaska before the pandemic to film ITV’s Dancing On Thin Ice
• The special follows their investigation into the impact of climate change 
• They also perform their Bolero dance that won them gold in the 1984 Olympics 

Olympic champions Torvill and Dean have been ice-dancing together for more than 45 years, which Christopher Dean reckons must be some sort of record. 

‘We’re unique. I was thinking recently about other famous partnerships and we’ve outlasted a lot of them. We’ve been together longer than Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, even Morecambe & Wise. I don’t know why I was thinking comedy duos, but I was.’

With great timing (comedic or otherwise), Jayne Torvill tries to think of which other couples might challenge them for the title of the UK’s longest-serving double acts. 

‘Ant and Dec?’ she wonders, as Chris shakes his head (he’s right, Ant and Dec were only born in 1975, the year Torvill and Dean started skating together).

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Jayne Torvill, 63, and Christopher Dean, 62, visited Alaska for ITV’s Dancing On Thin Ice. Pictured: The pair reprising their Bolero on a frozen Alaskan lake

‘Maybe the Queen?’ says Chris. Far be it for us to quibble that the Queen might be more of a solo artist in this sense. 

Anyway, thankfully we’re still celebrating their togetherness because there was a hairy moment during their latest TV project that could have meant Torvill being without Dean. Unthinkable.

The pair were filming a new documentary (about ice, naturally) in Alaska. They’d found a gorgeous frozen lake to skate on, but Chris, 62, a trained scuba diver, was offered the opportunity to do something remarkable – dive into the water through an ice hole and watch Jayne, 63, skating above him.

Being a derring-do type he seized the chance. An underwater camera followed his progress – and the results are stunning. 

Another camera was ‘up top’ to film Jayne’s reaction as he emerged from the sub-zero depths. She waited. And waited. And when Chris finally appeared, clearly unable to catch his breath, her face was a picture of worry.

It was all fine, ultimately, but there’s a bit of joking today about how heads would have rolled on the production team if Christopher had come a cropper.

‘Someone would have got into trouble,’ he grins. ‘We’re joking about it now, but the fact is that it’s dangerous, and the chance of going into the water unintentionally if you skate over a patch of thinner ice is high. 

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Chris admits skating on a frozen lake was a dream, after spending their whole lives skating in an artificial environment. Pictured:  Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean prepare to dance to the Bolero on a frozen mountain lake in the Alaskan Wilderness

‘We had all these safety instructions. We had to wear helmets to begin with, and we had ice hooks around our necks – if we went into the water, the idea was we’d grab these hooks and jab them into the ice.’

That’s if you fall in accidentally, but he dived in willingly. It sounds utterly terrifying. 

‘Well, I’m a certified diver, but the experience is completely different. Once you go down, everything sort of compresses on you. 

‘You try to keep an eye on where the hole is, but there were two or three occasions where I lost it. You get disorientated because everything looks the same, so your heart beats a bit quicker for a minute.’ Jayne nods. 

‘I think when he came out his chest was just tight from the extreme cold.’

The ITV special, Dancing On Thin Ice, is quite a departure for the duo. 

Filmed before the pandemic, it saw them travel to Alaska to investigate the impact of climate change on communities there while looking for the perfect outdoor location to perform a special version of their famous Bolero, the dance that won them gold in the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo.

Chris admits that dancing in the wild has long been a dream of his. He explains that at his boyhood training rink in Nottingham there was a mural on the ceiling of an idyllic frozen paradise. 

‘There were skaters, and mountains in the background, and it was what you saw even before you went through the doors into the actual rink. 

‘I still remember how atmospheric it was and how, in my subconscious, there was a gravitational pull. I was transfixed by the people on the ice, like they were flying. That mural has always stayed in my mind.’

Of course, his whole life has been about flying on the ice, but on manufactured ice. 

‘It struck me recently that we’ve spent our whole lives skating in circles, in a confined space, in an artificial environment. The idea of skating on a frozen lake, out in nature, was just a dream, I suppose.’

He’s always been fascinated by ice – its colour, shape, how it’s formed, ‘how it takes on a life of its own’, he says. 

Ice on a lake has its own quality – it’s alive

Now though, he’s an ice addict. ‘It’s extraordinary. In Alaska we got the chance to walk on a glacier and go down into a ravine, which means you’re actually in the ice. 

‘To be able to see it up close, and touch it, is remarkable. That ice was potentially 6-7,000 years old, so to be able to go and skate on it, well, it blows your mind.’

It also takes your breath away, literally. It sounds like a ridiculous thing to say, Jayne admits, but the ice in Alaska is really cold. 

‘It’s brutal, a very hard cold, and the temperature alters the quality of the ice.’ At one point during filming the temperature fell to minus 25°C, and when they did find an expanse where they could perform their beloved Bolero it was too cold to don the outfits they’d normally wear. 

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Chris said one of his most vivid memories from their time in Alaska was feeling ‘incredibly small’ because they weren’t performing for anyone 

Nor did they want to wear bulky all-weather gear, so they compromised with the sort of jumpers Chris remembered from his boyhood mural. Dream fulfilled, then? They both go a bit wistful at the memory of skating the Bolero in one of the most remote corners of the world.

‘It’s so different to dancing on an ice rink,’ says Chris. ‘Ice on a lake has its own quality. It’s alive. The sound of it is different. It cracks and creaks.

‘One of the most vivid memories was just of feeling incredibly small. When we dance normally, all attention is on us. You’re in a stadium or whatever, and all eyes are on you. Here, there was no one. 

IT TAKES US LONGER TO GET UP THESE DAYS! 

Quite astonishingly, given that they are both approaching pension age, Torvill and Dean still train. 

They have to be in tip-top shape physically to dance on ITV’s Dancing On Ice (which is all set for a return in the New Year), and they trained for the Alaska trip.

Does getting older not make them more fearful on the ice, more aware of their physical limitations? ‘Yes, absolutely. You feel it more. As you get older, falls, muscle tears, things like that, are worse,’ says Chris.

‘They take longer to heal, so you try to avoid injury.’ That’s not always possible though. 

Jayne relates the story of falling on top of Chris just a few weeks back. 

‘We had earbuds in and one of mine fell out. What were the chances of him hitting it? Tiny, but he did and fell, and I went on top of him.’

‘It takes us longer to get up these days too,’ jokes Chris. ‘When you’re young you just bounce back up!’

‘It was just us and nature. A small filming crew, yes, but it wasn’t about performing for anyone. It was the emotional feeling of doing something we’d never done before.’

It’s a soaring, affecting watch. Also an educational one. For some people the revelation that ice isn’t white will be a shocker. 

‘It’s more blue, but it can look black,’ says Jayne. They know, of course, that the ice in an ice rink is chemically treated to look whiter. 

‘There is actually paint in it,’ says Chris. ‘But outdoors it’s completely different.’

Their travels took them across Alaska on an epic train ride through the wilds, which saw the conductor stop the train to help them find an ideal skating spot. 

‘I don’t think he’d ever seen ice dancing. He thought we could just dance on the snow,’ says Jayne. 

They travel by husky sled, Chris eats reindeer sausage (Jayne declines), and Santa makes an appearance. But much of the programme is about the hunt for the elusive ice.

‘That was the most incredible part. How hard it was to actually find ice we could skate on,’ says Jayne. ‘When we arrived it was surprisingly mild – not that much colder than we’re used to here.’ 

They were increasingly horrified as they had to travel quite far inland to find proper expanses of snow and ice. ‘Local people were telling us the change has been dramatic, even in a short space of time. We’re talking five years.’

In fact, in 2019 there was no ice at all for a stretch of 150 miles off Alaska’s coastline. Scientists warn that an area of sea ice the size of Scotland is lost each year, and by 2050 Arctic waters could be completely free of ice. 

Temperatures in Alaska are, on average, 1.4°C up, but some towns are reporting average temperatures up by as much as 4°C.

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The entire village of Shishmaref are relocating further inland before they fall into the sea, as temperatures in Alaska continue to rise. Pictured: Chris and Jayne go dog mushing in Alaska

The immediate effects are on the communities themselves. 

Places like Shishmaref are in the middle of a ‘relocation’ process (yes, the entire village is being moved further inland before it falls into the sea), while traditional whaling communities are seeing lives lost as fisherfolk are forced to travel further from the shore into more dangerous conditions. 

Then there is the issue of increasing forest fires – as the ice melts, plant life dries out, with catastrophic consequences. This is, of course, exactly what environmentalists have been warning us of, and the show, although gentle in tone, is terrifying in parts.

It works on another level too – showing one of our most famous couples when they aren’t performing. This is illuminating. 

Chris is definitely the more gung-ho of the two, and the chatterbox, although he insists that when they’re together they are perfectly happy with silence.

They can’t quite decide whether they’re like an old married couple, brother and sister or colleagues. They settle on ‘best friends’.

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Jayne who admits to being more even-tempered, said if they argue it’s because Chris (pictured) is always five minutes early

‘We really are. We know each other so well,’ says Chris. 

‘I can tell what sort of a day Jayne has had just by looking at her, and vice versa. The nice thing about this trip was that it was just effortless. Neither of us felt a need to fill the spaces.’

They agree Chris is also the more volatile of the two. ‘I’ve always been more calm and even-tempered, while Chris can be more up and down,’ says Jayne. ‘But he’s mellowed.’

He is astonishingly driven, though. They both must be, but his drive is palpable. Great in a sporting setting, not so easy in life.

‘If we argue it’s because he’s always five minutes early, ringing me, saying, “Where are you?” I’ll say, “Well, it’s not time yet. We still have five minutes.”’ Chris looks defiant. 

‘My motto is, “If you’re not five minutes early, you’re late.”’

Is there anything that irritates Chris about Jayne? ‘Well she’s getting more forgetful about things.’ She rolls her eyes. 

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Jayne said if there’s a clash in personality you end up spending your time having arguments instead of training. Pictured: The duo on Dancing On Ice TV show

Actually, the more you chat to them, the more you realise that Jayne exudes a quiet confidence. Perhaps she is actually in charge? ‘Quietly in control, yes,’ she agrees. 

‘But I have to make him think he’s right.’ He laughs at the idea she’s operating him from behind. ‘Can you see her hand on my back?’

Joking aside, they’ve worked out exactly how their partnership needs to function, and that is the secret of their longevity. If they’d both had Chris’s personality, then perhaps it wouldn’t have worked, I suggest. 

‘Yes, and that was the case with the partner he had before me,’ says Jayne. 

‘There was a clash, and you can’t have that. If there’s a clash you’ll spend your time having arguments, and that’s time you could be spending training.’

Today, though, there is an admission that they can’t dance forever. ‘We’re getting closer to the end,’ says Chris. But not yet. 

Their real secret? They still love to dance on that ice, wherever they find it. ‘Nothing beats it, still,’ he says. ‘It is like flying.’  

Dancing On Thin Ice With Torvill & Dean, New Year’s Day, 9pm, ITV.