User blog comment:Xilinoc/Ch. 567 (Rukia be like "I ain't even scared though")/@comment-10554972-20140205203959/@comment-1268838-20140206175815

It's from our own site - "Hyōrinmaru is the strongest of all ice-element Zanpakutō in Soul Society. As such, Hitsugaya doesn't need water to be present in order for him to use its abilities."

Ice-type Zanpakuto (with the exception of Hyourinmaru) produce ice by gathering the ambient moisture in the air and freezing it. If you want to get scientific about how, they do so by drawing heat away from it, thereby reducing its temperature instantly - that's how "cold" works. If you want to go even further than that, the very definition of freeze is that the moisture in an object hardens due to a loss of heat. Every single effect that Rukia described in this chapter was a direct effect of water being frozen - cryoseism, blood plasma (predominantly being composed of water) being frozen.

Frankly, it's unnecessary to delve into all of these semantics. Asides from Sode no Shirayuki having been outright stated to be an ice-type, all of its Dance abilities are undeniably related to freezing water.