Above: Caroline Green and Michael Parsons compete at the 2025 World Championships. Photo credit: Melanie Heaney/U.S. Figure Skating
By Rachel Lutz
Caroline Green, 23, has no memories of the 1990s, clearly not having been born yet. And her partner, Michael Parsons, “was tearing it up in the club when he was 5” by the end of the decade, she joked.
That hasn’t stopped the 2025 U.S. bronze medal-winning ice dancers from diving in headfirst into research for their ’90s-themed rhythm dance, set to “Groove is in the Heart” by Dee-lite and “I’m Too Sex”y by Right Said Fred, for their Olympic season.
Parsons called Green’s Pinterest boards “crazy” but told SKATING magazine they were an invaluable place to start their research. The team studied music videos, runway catalogs and worked with University of Michigan dance lecturer Krisilyn “Tony” Frazier to bring their ideas about the ’90s aesthetic and movement to life.
Photo by Janet Liu
“The music videos are super helpful, because not only are you hearing the music that you’re thinking about skating to but you’re seeing how they’re dancing to it, you’re seeing the energy and the aesthetics,” Parsons said. “You’re seeing all these psychedelic images floating across the screen, these crazy neon colors. All of that plays into a vibe that we want to take onto the ice.”
“We have the freedom to dance on the ice versus just doing skating moves and posing as we go along,” Green added. “It’s up to us to stay true to the dance side of ice dance. … We’re really just trying to embody that ’90s dance style.”
Leaning even further into their Olympic prep, the team said they were inspired by Greek mythology for their free dance, performed to a piece called “Escalate” by Tsar B.
“We’ve been a team where we’re guided by our feelings and getting more abstract with our concepts — focusing more on movement itself,” Green said. “To have the freedom to create interesting shapes and move in novel ways but still have an emotional backing and story guide as we go along, that journey has been exciting.”
Parsons recalled that when they heard the music for the first time alongside their coaches and choreographer Jean-Luc Baker, they all sat up a little bit straighter.
“In the back of everyone’s minds [this season] is, ‘is this an Olympic program?’ which is a really hard thing to ask of a piece of music,” Parsons said. “This was one of the pieces that as soon as it played, everyone on the ice was like, ‘that could be an Olympic program.’”
To not acknowledge the pressure that comes with an Olympic season is only delaying the inevitable anxiety they’d feel anyway, they said.
“It is exactly what it is and everyone knows it,” Parsons said. “Every team that’s competing for a spot knows it, too.”
And despite the shift in the U.S. ice dance landscape with the announcement of the return of 2018 Olympic bronze medalists and siblings Maia and Alex Shibutani, Green and Parsons’ plan hasn’t changed. Parsons called their return “good for the sport.”
“One of the great things about ice dance is when we’re on the ice it’s our ice, and when they’re on the ice it’s theirs,” Parsons said.
“These are spots that they’re not given, they’re earned,” Green said. “We’re excited that we have the opportunity to do everything that’s in our control to make our case for earning that spot. The more competition we have, the more we’re all going to push each other to do our best.”
And more importantly, Green added, “the pressure is coming from how much we care and how much we love the programs that we’ve come up with.”
“Whatever the outcome is, whatever the selection is — those are all things that are beyond our control,” she said. “Did we have two programs at Nationals that we had so much fun skating? That really spoke to who we are as a team and who we are as people? Where we’re at now speaks to the culmination of all the hard work we’ve put in.”
The duo may even have a third program at the U.S. Championships that they’ll have fun skating — their fan-favorite exhibition set to “Sunset Boulevard” and “With One Look” from the revival Broadway production and Tony-winning Sunset Blvd.
The first time they put it together, in 2025, “It was very by-the-seat-of-your-pants,” Parsons said.
They had been chatting on the concourse the evening prior to the exhibition with Jordan Cowan, aka On Ice Perspectives, when the subject of the Broadway show came up. Green wondered aloud how that might translate on the ice, and after some brainstorming, the gala program was born in one take — backstage lip-syncing and all.
“Now that we have it down, it’s so much fun to perform it,” said Green, who also shared their costumes came from a last-minute shopping trip the night before the program’s debut. “With the film component and the backstage thing, you’re always there with different teams… Everyone’s so willing to be a part of it because it can get so ridiculous.”
“It’s a great way to highlight the skating community at whatever event we’re at,” Parsons said.
