It is in fact called Freestyle Ice Skating — or more recently Ice Freestyle. I understand the “freestyle” word can be confused with figure skating, but that is an unfortunate coincidence. I can assure you, Ice Freestylers don’t give a flying hoot about figure skating, nor do they want to look like ballet. The “Freestyle” word is in analogy to “Freestyle Skiing,” “Freestyle Snowboarding,” etc. In any case, figure skaters have renamed everything in the last 30 years and the word “freestyle” is no longer applied to any actual figure skating, but only as a designation of a figure skating session.
Freestyle Ice Skating is a grass roots movement that began around 2010, and it challenges many of the assumptions we have about figure skating (that it is inherently expensive, etc). To see what I mean, watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUAE7M0DFrk
Ice Freestyle community grew up (is growing up) in the internet age, with values of excellent cinematography and sharing / learning from each other through dispersed communities online. As in breakdancing, competitions happen in terms of one-on-one “battles.” Prominent members of the community do NOT want this to be an Olympic sport at this time (see the debate on “sportification” and breaking). Locally, Freestyle Ice Skating (FIS) is organized around clubs. It is most popular in Central Europe, and almost unheard of in the USA.
Here you can see a basic battle with a few kids:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c25JhJ90lWc
This is more high level:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=151Ridvp8iI
Nandi is one of the early founders of the activity, here he shares is fascinating story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ7cF-uqlJQ
Nandi also brought the 540 Kick to FIS (borrowed from Tae Kwon Do), which is one its crowning most-difficult jumps, right up there with figure skating quad jumps. Here he explains how he trained it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6SEOHP35CI
Here’s his YouTube channel. He has tons of tutorial videos to help you (and everyone else) learn:
https://www.youtube.com/@NagyerdeiKorisok
Patrick of Alpine Ice Freestyle is another early adopter and “big name” in FIS. Here’s his channel, where you can find more tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/c/AlpineIceFreestyle
Patrick sells for Graf and T-blades (the blades you see with circles underneath the skate). I’m not sure what the advantage is of T-Blades vs typical hockey blades (I’m sure Patrick has a video explaining why). I do know that T-blades never really took off with hockey players, but they are more popular among Freestylers. I believe it is Patrick (or someone Patrick knows) who toured with Disney on Ice, and that is the main way Americans have interacted with FIS so far. There are apparently also FIS tours that are documented on YouTube: to the USA, to Japan, etc. It reminds me of the International Style envoys sent to the USA in the 1910’s (the first International Style competition in the USA was held in New Haven, CT).
There are a few FIS Festivals that happen each year. The biggest / oldest is in Budapest (formerly Vienna, in fact at the same rink where Viennese people started figure skating). There’s also one in Inzell, Germany (put on by Alpine Ice Freestyle). These events typically get movies made out of them, which you can find online . For example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOz1bvI3Tdw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHg1vAeN63M
https://alpineicefreestyle.de/upcomming-events/
https://icefree.style
https://www.instagram.com/alpineicefreestyle/reels/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGDPYNI5REc
Thankfully there is now a Wikipedia article on FIS. I say thankfully because Wikipedia requires pre-existing PUBLISHED sources to be cited (not web pages), and FIS has almost none at this point — it’s all YouTube channels and websites by participants. An aspiring journalist needs to write some articles / books about this movement. Anyway, the Wikipedia article lists some of the common tricks and many of the clubs, so it’s a good reference. (there are also trick compilation videos from some of the main clubs, which are totally worth watching). It also talks about T-Blades. Again… the clubs with the most leadership in the community are Alpine Ice Freestyle, Nagyerdei Korisok and Blackbird Ice Freesytle. But more is coming all the time; apparently there is now a FIS community in Japan.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Freestyle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_l5I3gMEEQ
https://www.youtube.com/@GlobalIce
Fancy footwork is important and valued in FIS (not just the big tricks). The Triangle is one of the first things to learn, here are tutorials on it from the two big names:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMyNphKbk4A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdTV3Vp451Q
FIS is cool, but you need hockey skates for most of it. In general, figure skating is about balancing over a stable platform, whereas FIS exists in quasi-equilibrium: never quite balanced, but not falling either. And hockey skates are really better for that, better able to make quick movements and turns and changes of weight. FIS also involves a lot of jumps landing forward, which can be deadly in figure skates. But there are a few tricks you can learn in figure skates (as well as the basic edges, 3-turns, etc which Nandi emphasizes). Grapevine, for example (although that was borrowed from figure skaters). Also the pendulum spin. Here I am trying pendulum spin behind an unuspecting ice dance lesson:
Anyway… enjoy the FIS rabbit hole, there is so much to watch and learn from on YouTube. FIS is maybe the most exciting and dynamic skating community today, and it reminds me of figure skating in the 1890’s (not that I was there, but I’ve read the books): infinite creativity and new ideas and trying things out and learning from each other. The difference is, FIS today has YouTube. I bought hockey skates to learn FIS (no T-blades), but haven’t yet had time to really sink my feet into this exciting skating art.