Headbanging History: Tracing The Roots Of The Bounce Spin

Calla Urbanski and Rocky Marval

You know that cherished recipe that has been passed down through the generations? The one your grandmother taught your aunt and your aunt taught your mother and your mother taught you? The story of one of adagio pairs skating's most mind blowing tricks of the trade - the bounce spin or 'headbanger' goes a little like the story of that recipe... and I had a little fun trying to unravel the mystery.

Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman

Before we take a look at the mystery and the history, let's take a look at what the bounce spin is. It's a jaw dropping adagio pairs trick where one partner swings the other around with both feet off the ice, supported only by the grip of the swinger on the swingee's ankle. The swingee is elevated up and down during the spin. Performed well, the head of the swingee comes terrifyingly close to being smashed on the ice. The International Skating Union, of course, wants no part in it. Per ISU regulations "spinning movements in which the man swings the lady around in the air while holding her hand or foot, are illegal... Twist-like or rotational movements during which the lady is turned over one or more times with her skating foot leaving the ice are not permitted."

World Professional Champions Anita Hartshorn and Frank Sweiding have one of the best bounce spins out there and have performed thousands in their career without a hitch, but even they have had a close call. In my interview with Anita back in June of 2013, she told me that "while performing in a Sun Valley show we were entering into a bounce spin (headbanger) and right as Frank took that hard back inside edge to pull me off my feet he stepped onto a gum wrapper that had blown out onto the ice! We both fell hard but fortunately we came out of it with only some bruises as well as bruised egos." It's dangerous business.

My quest to learn how the bounce spin got its start began by doing the obvious - asking Anita how she and Frank learned it. Anita explained that "Frank learned the bounce spin from Don Yontz when he first joined Ice Capades in 1978. Don was a roller skater turned ice skater for professional ice shows as an adagio skater. He had the best bounce spin and Frank was lucky to learn from him." 

Like Anita and Frank, who have taken their act everywhere from Guam to Germany, Don Yontz' skating background was every bit as unique. A former water skier and roller skater who. since turning professional in 1968, toured with Ice Capades, Ice Follies and Holiday On Ice, Yontz was actually the principal skater and organizer of the first skating show at Cypress Gardens in the mid-eighties. He explained, "I learned it from Cal Cook circa 1969. I saw a roller skating table act do it in an old film from the thirties or forties. The roller table acts were popular in Vaudeville. The neck spin and neck swivel also had their origin there as well as the teeth swivel gimmicks. Remember, the table was sometimes only four feet in diameter. My early adagio training was from then partner Darolyn Prior. She was trained by Terry Rudolph at the Casa in Garmisch, Germany. There has never been a trick that thrilled an audience more. Hard to learn or do, no. Dangerous, yes."

Who was this Cal Cook? In the sixties, Cal and his wife Dori, daughter Melanie (Kim) and twins Kris and Kelly were one of skating's few family acts. While touring with Holiday On Ice as a stilt skater, he met his wife Dori, a chorus skater in the show from Los Angeles. They both left the tour, moved to Burbank, had children and Cal took up coaching. When Holiday On Ice returned to Hollywood, Morris Chalfen convinced Cal and Dori to return to the show... and incorporate the whole family in an act! The children, who hadn't even skated before, took lessons. Choreographer Tommy DePauw worked out an act for them which focused around Cal and Dori as an adagio pair and the family went on the road exploring the world by trailer. It would have been while The Cook Family was on tour as 'Harrigan's Hooligans' that Cook would have taught Yontz the bounce spin, which he passed down to Hartshorn and Sweiding.

Let's go a step further back to the late forties and early fifties and meet Narena Greer of San Diego, California and Dick Norris of Colorado Springs. The husband and wife pair toured with the Ice Follies from 1949 to 1952 as Narena and Norris, thrilling audiences with their adagio tricks. Narena had a roller skating background and she teamed up with Dick because he was the first man she could find who could lift her properly. Their signature move was also the bounce spin, but it looked a little different to the bounce spin we see today. In their version, he held Narena by one foot and one hand, spun her around level with his chin and then dipped her while rotating so that her chin whizzed just above the ice.  Footage of a 1950 roller skating act by Jerry Berke, Art Wall and Eva Hartley shows 'swivel spin' tricks that were eerily similar to the adagio tricks we see on ice today, including the same version of the bounce spin that Narena and Norris popularized after World War II.

Photo courtesy "The National Ice Skating Guide"

Though the Narena and Norris version of the bounce spin was most likely invented on rollers, it was first performed on ice decades earlier. An advertisement for one of the Hotel Sherman's College Inn skating shows in Chicago depicts Norval Baptie swinging Gladys Lamb around by her ankle with the assistance of one arm and credits them as "the originators of the airplane spin." Photo evidence and footage as far back as the early twenties and thirties show Charlotte Oelschlägel and her husband Curt Neumann as well as Howard Nicholson and Freda Whitaker performing the 'airplane spin' and 'whirligig'. While they are not the same as a headbanger, as you can see there are certainly strong similarities.

Where did the bounce spin really get its start? A hotel skating show in Chicago or at the Casa Carioca in Germany? A Vaudeville table top roller skating act? St. Moritz? Somewhere else entirely? I am not convinced it is a mystery that anyone can solve with absolute certainty. However, pieced together these scattered clues provide the ingredients for one of the most thrilling elements on pairs skating's menu. A recipe for disaster, if you will.

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of the figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.