Jimmie Manners: Bringing Hip-Hop to Ion Ice Dancers

Dance prodigy Jimmie Manners was born in 1987, just as hip-hop was exploding across America. However, Manners' first introduction to the world of dance was ballet. Growing up, Manners fondly remembers his mother putting on classic ballet productions, such as The Nutcracker, while his father would bring home bootleg karate videos. The result of these two influences was Manners wanting to be a karate ballerina.
 
"By high school, I had already done so much in the New York and D.C. areas," Manners shared. He started taking ballet lessons at the age of 3 and by 9 was taking classes with grown men. "[When I auditioned for Step Up], the director had never seen two young Black guys who could do ballet. But, also, we were in there doing head slides, back flips, breaking and hip-hop."
 
At the encouragement of his teachers who saw Manners' potential to succeed as a professional dancer, Manners left college to join a hip-hop dance company. For almost 13 years, Manners toured with dancers and artists around the world. Most impressively, he starred in and choreographed Step Up 2 and was a principal dancer for Jennifer Lopez during her three-year residency in Las Vegas.
 
"[After working with Lopez], I realized I was ready for the next step. I wanted to be a choreographer, start my own journey and return back home to the East Coast," said Manners.
 
One day, Manners was sitting at home during the COVID-19 quarantine when he received an email from "a lady asking about figure skating stuff." Confused by the request, Manners assumed the email was not meant for him and ignored it. It took two more attempts for Elena Novak to finally get in touch with Manners and explain why she wanted someone who had never ice skated to work with her ice dancers at the Ion International Training Center in Leesburg, Virginia. A leading factor was the new International Skating Union (ISU) "Street Dance Rhythms (such as hip-hop, disco, swing, krump, popping, funk, etc.)" requirement for the rhythm dance section for 2021-22 season.  
 
"I didn't even know ice dancing existed," Manners admitted. "I started working with the ice dancers off ice and choreographing hip-hop pieces. Once [Novak] saw I could do classical and other techniques even better than hip-hop, she and Aleksei [Kiliakov] asked if I would like to join their team and become a full-time coach."
 
Manners' attention to detail and repertoire in the dance world has proved instrumental in shaping Novak and Kiliakov's skaters. For example, Manners was able to not only help Lorraine McNamara and Anton Spiridonov with their Nelly, Blackstreet and Outkast medley rhythm dance but, also, their Phantom of the Opera free dance. According to Novak and Kiliakov, Manners was able to bring a new energy and dynamic to their team. Although his new work with ice dancers is different from anything he has done before, Manners has fallen in love with the new creative challenge and described the transition as "fairly easy."
 

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"He did an amazing job of translating all these [hip-hop] steps that he knows off the ice, onto the ice," ice dancer Michael Parsons told US Figure Skating Fan Zone in November. "He's pushing us every day to do new moves. He can tell, from our body types and styles of skating, what will and won't work. That's invaluable."
 
"My job as a choreographer is to make the artist look the best," Manners said. "If something doesn't work, it pushes me to come up with something else that is super dope. The hardest part is getting the dancers to get loose and actually look like they are doing hip-hop."
 
Beyond teaching his students the hip-hop moves, Manners has been adamant about providing additional education on the history, culture and vocabulary of hip-hop. By providing the background of moves and techniques, Manners believes it can help a dancer "channel a character authentically."
 
Leading up to the 2021 Guaranteed Rate Skate America Molly Cesanek, who competes with partner Yehor Yehorov, agreed Manners "gives us the understanding of that hip-hop vibe, which is a completely different way of moving. It's sharper and [requires] a lot of control and confidence."
 
This season, Cesanek and Yehorov, who are competing this week at the Golden Spin of Zagreb, have created a rhythm dance piece that starts and ends with music by Bruno Mars and includes Beyoncé's "Partition" for the Midnight Blues portion.
 
"When I described the program to [Cesanek and Yehorov], I told them they were going to go from funk -- giving us 'locking' -- and then they were going to have to give sensual moves," Manners explained. "It's a contrast of moves. [During the Bruno Mars pieces], they are moving sharp and quick. [During "Partition"], the moves are slower, sexier and more risqué. If the audience and the judges feel something, then the artistry of the program begins to feel more like a performance."
 
Like their training partners, Caroline Green and Parsons have been challenged to bring hip-hop into their new rhythm dance. Even though Green and Parsons were familiar with hip-hop from their free dance last season set to music by Prince, Manners chose music from Janet Jackson and En Vogue for their rhythm dance this year.
 
"In a lot of the Michael Jackson programs I've seen, skaters are doing the same three moves. I wanted to go with Janet Jackson because it pushes you more to be authentic to the culture [of hip-hop]," Manners said. "Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation is a very pivotal time in hip-hop. It was the first time we really saw street jazz, which is a jazzy way to do hip-hop. [The music video] really leaves no stone unturned, and I wanted to be able to give this program to a team that could handle it."
 
"It's such a non-traditional way to skate," Green shared in her interview with Fan Zone. "[Our rhythm dance is] very different from what we've done in the past and what is the norm for ice dance."
 
Despite the difficulties skaters (and other choreographers) are having translating hip-hop to the ice, Manners believes now is the best time to make hip-hop a dance requirement. For more than 40 years, hip-hop has grown in popularity and has only become more popular with the rise of social media.

With the addition of hip-hop to ice dancing, Manners is looking forward to the ways in which the sport can elevate itself. Parsons noted, many of the top dancers from the 1980s to early 2000s had unique and powerful programs, which has been lost in recent years. In the short time Manners has been a part of the sport, he has also noticed many athletes performing the same skills, elements and transitions in their programs.
 
"I've been learning the ropes, but I keep asking if we can push the limits. Wherever I apply my skills, I try to be a catalyst for change. I want to show people there are new ways of moving."