Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing

The Coldest Cut

There is a specific, terrifying sound that a skate blade makes when it bites into the ice during a silence—a guttural, tearing noise that the television broadcast usually drowns out with commentary and Tchaikovsky. *Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing*, the new three-part docuseries from director Katie Walsh (*Simone Biles Rising*), is obsessed with that sound. Dropping just days before the 2026 Milano Cortina Games, this is not a puff piece designed to sell Olympic tickets. It is a stark, claustrophobic examination of a sport that demands the physical brutality of hockey and the aesthetic fragility of ballet, all performed with a smile that must never, ever falter.

Walsh understands that ice dance is inherently absurd to the outsider—ballroom dancing on knives—and she leans into that cognitive dissonance. She eschews the wide, flat lighting of network sports coverage for a visual language that is intimate and often uncomfortable. We are not watching athletes; we are watching nervous systems under siege.



The series is built less on the competition itself and more on the suffocating weight of the "final attempt." The narrative anchors itself on three distinct pairings, but the emotional core lies with the American veterans Madison Chock and Evan Bates. Having spent over a decade chasing the top of the podium, their segment is a study in the agony of perfectionism. Walsh’s camera lingers on them in their minimalist apartment, where the silence is heavy with things unsaid. They are married, partners in every sense, yet the film captures the unique loneliness of a duo that has merged their identities so completely that they no longer know where the performance ends and the marriage begins.

In sharp contrast are the Canadians, Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, framed here as the defiant auteurs of the sport. If Chock and Bates are the polished marble of the establishment, Gilles and Poirier are the jagged edges. Walsh uses their segments to explore the artistic stifling inherent in a judged sport. The tension isn't just about winning; it's about whether the rigid, often conservative world of figure skating will allow them to exist as they are.



But the true narrative coup—and the element that elevates this beyond a standard sports documentary—is the inclusion of the French "wildcards," Laurence Fournier Beaudry and the legendary Guillaume Cizeron. Cizeron’s return to competition with a new partner after his historic run with Gabriella Papadakis provides a Shakespearean layer of intrigue. The series does not shy away from the "off-ice turbulence"—the whispers, the accusations, the ghosts of past partnerships—but treats it with a somber gravity rather than tabloid glee.

Ultimately, *Glitter & Gold* is a tragedy disguised as a prelude to glory. It posits that the gold medal is a MacGuffin; the real story is the terrifying vulnerability of the human body and the even more fragile nature of human connection. It forces us to ask what happens when the music stops, the sequins are packed away, and all that is left is the cold, hard silence of the rink.