Partnership and the Olympics Around 1975, Jayne Torvill was a British Junior Pairs champion, and Christopher Dean and his partner had won a British Junior Ice Dance competition. Nottingham coach
Janet Sawbridge put them together, and shortly afterwards, they started their ice dancing history. They took their first trophy in 1976. They changed coaches to
Betty Callaway in 1979. After a 5th-place finish at their first Olympic Games, in
Lake Placid in the
1980 Winter Olympics, and 4th place in the Worlds that year, they never took lower than first place in any competition they entered except the
1994 Winter Olympics. Singer-actor
Michael Crawford was the fourth member of the team, along with their trainer. He became a mentor to them around 1981, and went on to help them create their 1983 and 1984 Olympic routines, and "taught them how to act". Crawford said of them, "I found them to be delightful young people, the kind you want to help if you can." (
The Times November 1982). He was present with their trainer at the ringside, when the team won their perfect Olympics score with their
Boléro routine.
Going professional Although Torvill and Dean had been able to leave their jobs as an insurance book clerk and policeman, respectively—thanks to grants from the
City of Nottingham—they were not allowed to earn any money from skating as long as they wished to remain eligible for the Olympics. Turning professional in 1984, they took advantage not only of the financial but of the artistic possibilities of their new status. They worked with Australian dance choreographer
Graeme Murphy at first, and they were able to create not only routines for themselves but entire ice shows with a thematic coherence, which toured Australia, the U.S., and Europe. Their projects included a filmed fairy tale "Fire and Ice." In general, Dean would imagine the sequence he wanted to perform, and Torvill would work with him to refine it technically. They choreographed, as a team, for other ice dancers and skaters, particularly the Canadian brother–sister team
Isabelle and
Paul Duchesnay, who skated for France at the
Albertville 1992 Winter Olympics, taking the silver medal with their
West Side Story routine.
Return to the Olympics After ten years as professionals, Torvill and Dean decided to return to the amateur arena for the
1994 Olympics in
Lillehammer, Norway (along with other great skaters of the 1980s, such as
Brian Boitano and
Katarina Witt, following a change in eligibility rules). The couple moved to
Hamar, Norway, in 1993 to practise at the
Hamar Olympic Amphitheatre which hosted the
figure skating events. Their free dance was designed to re-establish some of the ideas about ice dance which they themselves had been instrumental in dismantling; "Let's Face The Music and Dance" had no swooning lovers, theatrical accessories, or strong ideological message; instead, the emphasis was upon pure, light-hearted dance in the
Astaire and
Rogers tradition. The routine did have one move, an assisted lift, which pushed the envelope of the rules, though they had danced the routine at the European Championships with no indication from the judges of any problems. According to their joint
autobiography,
Facing the Music, the lift was technically legal because the rule prohibited lifts "above the shoulders," and the lift they used was
not above the shoulders. The judges placed Torvill and Dean third, giving the second to perennial silver medalists
Usova and
Zhulin, and the gold medal to
Grishuk and
Platov, who continued to win gold through the next four years.
Life after the Olympics After the disappointing finish at Lillehammer, Torvill and Dean "retired from competitive skating" on 2 March 1994. Instead, they continued with their planned and very successful "Face the Music" tour, to be followed by numerous other projects: Dean choreographed a suite of dances to the songs of
Paul Simon for the English National Ballet, professional competitions, touring with
Stars on Ice, and collaborating with cellist
Yo-Yo Ma and director
Patricia Rozema on the video
Inspired by Bach: Six Gestures. In late 1998, they produced an ice show at
Wembley Stadium in London, "Ice Adventures," which included a "flying" ice ballet and other wonders. In the meantime, they were still choreographing, notably for the dynamic French Ice Dance team, Anissina and Peizerat, who won first place in the World Championships in 2000. In 1998, the pair officially retired, each continuing to coach and choreograph separately. Since 2006, they have acted as coaches, choreographers and performers in
ITV's
Dancing on Ice and its Australian version ''
Torvill and Dean's Dancing on Ice. The ITV show returned for a fifth series in January 2010. After the 2007 and 2008 UK series of Dancing on Ice'', Torvill and Dean took the show on the road for a British tour; a similar tour, the "25th Anniversary" (of their Sarajevo Olympic success) took place in 2009. In 2014, Torvill and Dean returned to Sarajevo to dance the Bolero one more time, celebrating the 30-year anniversary of their Olympics performance. Invited by the mayor of Sarajevo ahead of the
Youth Olympic Games in 2017, the event helped raise funds for a permanent ice rink and reminded the world of their efforts to bring back the Olympics to Sarajevo. 2015 saw Torvill and Dean make their
pantomime début at the
Manchester Opera House, performing in "Cinderella". Since 2018, they have been Head Judges on
Dancing on Ice, alongside Judges
Ashley Banjo and
Oti Mabuse. On 14 February 2024, it was announced that 2025 would be their final time skating together, before they would be retiring at the end of their final UK tour which ran from April to May 2025. It has also been confirmed that a new documentary titled
Torvill and Dean: The Ice Skating Years is set to be produced by
ITN Productions with
Jonathan Kydd as narrator and air on
Sky Documentaries sometime in 2026. ==Style and approach==