LIVE UPDATES: Olympic ice dance begins with hip-hop and blues programs

Hubbell and Donohue perform rhythm dance - Credit: Getty Images

Hubbell and Donohue perform rhythm dance – Credit: Getty Images

The Olympic ice dance competition gets underway with the rhythm dance on Saturday, Feb. 12, where teams will skate their first of two programs that determine the medalists.

The rhythm dance used to be known as the short dance. Each season, ice dance couples are assigned rhythms their programs must include, and this season we will see teams incorporate at least two rhythms from the following: street dance rhythms, jazz, reggae and blues. Street dance rhythms are defined by the International Skating Union as hip-hop, disco, swing, krunk, popping and funk.

WATCH LIVE at 6 a.m. ET: USA  |  NBCOlympics.com  |  Peacock

Follow along as 23 ice dance couples compete on their sport’s biggest stage with our live blog below…

Group 1

6:13 a.m. ET: Germany’s Katharina Mueller and Tim Dieck start us off with their Joker/Harley Quinn-inspired program. Cleaner performance than their team event rhythm dance that saw them place 10th of 10 in that segment. And we’re on the board with a score of 65.47 points.

6:21 a.m. ET: Juulia Turkkila and Matthias Versluis make their Olympic debuts to “Breathe You In My Dreams” and the popular “River,” earning 68.23 points.

6:27 a.m. ET: Throwing it back to “Hit the Road Jack” with Ukraine’s Oleksandra Nazarova and Maksim Nikitin. They move into the middle of the pack with 65.53 points.

6:34 a.m. ET: We’ve hit a brother-sister duo here with Natalie Taschlerova and Filip Taschler skating to Madonna. They, too, do better here than in the team event, taking 67.22 points and are second for now. For the first time, we’ve determined one of the 20 teams that will advance to the free dance is Turkkila and Versluis.

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