Motivation Quote by Robin Cousins

Cousins is pushing back against a lazy shorthand: that ice dance is the “polite” cousin of singles skating, all etiquette and compulsory steps, where creativity gets ironed flat by tradition. Coming from an athlete, the line reads less like theory and more like a plea for the discipline to be watched on its own terms. He’s arguing for permission: permission for skaters to be artists, and for audiences and judges to stop treating ice dance as a rulebook with sequins.

The phrasing is carefully tactical. “Should not be seen” targets perception rather than reality, because ice dance has always carried the burden of being evaluated through other people’s expectations. “Rigid conformist” is a double hit: it acknowledges the sport’s strict technical framework while exposing the social pressure behind it, the way certain styles get rewarded until they start to feel like the only styles allowed. Then he pivots to “freedom and originality,” language that sounds almost like a marketing slogan, but functions as a corrective to how legitimacy is often policed in judged sports: innovation is welcomed only after it’s been domesticated.

Context matters here. Cousins came up in an era when figure skating and dance were negotiating what counted as sport versus performance, athleticism versus taste. His point is that constraint doesn’t cancel creativity; it concentrates it. Ice dance’s rules can be a cage, or they can be a tight frame that makes risk visible: not just bigger lifts or faster edges, but bolder choices about character, rhythm, and what kind of story the ice can hold.