France's Carron and Jones have an early lead in short dance

They're dancing on skates at the Iceberg Skating Palace in Sochi at the 2014 Winter Olympics. 

Here's a quick primer on the ice dance short program competition, which began on Sunday morning with the short dance event:

Take ballroom dancing, add skates. It’s all about the beat in ice dance, where skaters pair up for spins, lifts and holds in two dances to a specific rhythm. Unlike pairs skating, ice dancers don’t throw or jump, and are meant to stay within two arms-lengths of one another.

Until the end of the 2009-10 season, Ice Dance competitions involved three dances. Now, the two-program format more closely resembles that of the Pairs competition.

Twenty-four pairs will compete in the event on Sunday, and France's Pernelle Carron and Lloyd Jones have an early lead after five pairs, with a score of 58.25. They had a 30.50 technical elements score and a 27.75 program components score. 

It's all about being in unison in the ice dance program, which is kind of hard when you're wearing skates and dancing on ice. 

The heavy hitters are still to come: the USA's Meryl Davis and Charlie White, Canada's Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir (the defending gold medalists), and Russia's Ekaterina Bobrova and Dmitri Soloviev. 

Visit the Sochi 2014 website for full results as they happen.