maya_alex

Amidst cheers of “Ole” and “Guapo” (meaning handsome), the ice dancers took the ice to perform a native Spanish dance, the Paso Doble, as the pattern of their short dance. With each passing element – from lifts to twizzles to step sequences – the crowd responded positively, and loudly.

After their short dance, for which they earned 63.90 points, Maia said “The crowd is amazing here. It’s so great to be here at the first major international competition in Spain for skating. It’s a real honor for us. The crowd was fantastic. They really responded to everything we were doing and it felt like we were able to take them through our performance as we were going through it.”

Added Alex, “We would hope that the with a Paso Doble (and) Flamenco short dance that we would hear some ‘Ole’s’ and that was certainly the case tonight.”

Maia – We were pleased with our performance today. It was our strongest free dance of the season. The audience really connected with it and the standing ovation that they gave us really meant a lot to us, especially when you can’t control the scores. We’re going to take the two strong performances that we had here, go home, train really hard and build for the second half of the season. It was great for us to be back at the Final and we’re looking forward to being here for the next few years.