Men's PCS at Worlds. | Golden Skate

Men's PCS at Worlds.

skateflower

Match Penalty
Joined
Nov 5, 2011
Finally got a chance to watch the top 4 men's performances. This result was outrageous. Bravo to the French audience.

How would you have scored the PCS for the following performances in the men's LP:

Components are

Skating Skills

Transitions/Linking Footwork

Choreography/Composition

Interpretation

Performance/Execution

Scores are given in increments of 0.25.



Takahashi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64QdXaZsUxs&feature=related

Hanyu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA2Ks3osTS0&feature=relmfu

Chan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8Nzn0K7yc4&feature=relmfu

Brian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97I4QNoR4cg
 
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Joined
Mar 14, 2006
I guess you didn't see the thread where we watched the vid of Dai and Patrick at the small medals ceremony and decided to call off the wars. :)
 

skatinginbc

Medalist
Joined
Aug 26, 2010
As far as Skating Skills and Transitions/Linking Footwork are concerned, I trust the opinions of the judges. I'm curious about PE, CH and IN though. I wonder what the result would be if we ask a panel of experts from other performance arts such as dance, music, theater, circus arts, and so on. If the consensus among experts of other disciplines differs significantly from that of the skating judges, then it suggests that figure skating is an art that can be appreciated only by a selected few.
 
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skateflower

Match Penalty
Joined
Nov 5, 2011
I guess you didn't see the thread where we watched the vid of Dai and Patrick at the small medals ceremony and decided to call off the wars. :)

You're switching the topic. I was specifically referring to the PCS gap in men's long programs. The 5 pts gap between Dai and Chan is similar to the gap between Kostner and Elenova. Really??:rolleye:

Outrageous results and corrupt judging.
 

skatinginbc

Medalist
Joined
Aug 26, 2010
This is what I saw with my untrained eyes:

Chan's LP presentation:

He skated to the music for the first 50 seconds, outstanding start. After completing his 4T3T, he lagged behind all the way through his 3A and his circular step sequence, caught up, lagged behind again….and started to play catch-up. Thenceforth his choreographic highlights seldom matched the notes. For instance, he raised his both arms to highlight the music when the note (quarter E) was in the middle of "fermata" (i.e., pause)(3:36, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8Nzn0K7yc4&feature=relmfu)--He highlighted a PAUSE!!! Similarly, he raised his both arms to highlight an off-beat chord (the 2nd beat, root note G♯)(4:18)--He highlighted an UNACCENTED beat!!! Even some of his transitional moves looked out of place due to the musical mismatch (e.g., the little running steps at 4:22 after his 2nd 3Lz, although originally choreographed to the music, now lost its meaning and looked as if he was hurrying to catch up). "Highlighting almost all of the notes", a praise for Chan's skating I read somewhere, means no note actually highlighted. A busy bee showing "I can do this (e.g., hops, directional changes) and I can do that (e.g., raising one leg up high while skating on a deep edge) deserved claps for his tricks (skating skills) but not his musical interpretation if failing to match tricks with music. Watching his LP was like having audio out of sync. I felt as if my eyes and ears were disconnected, which pricked my brain. To be able to interpret music well, one needs to live in the music or be one with the music. How well could he interpret it with honest emotions if he was off-beat more than half of his program?
I am no skating expert. But some of his flaws were plainly visible to my untrained eyes. For instance, his camel spin during the flying spin combination (FCCoSp) was way off—off center and off balance. His 3Lz+1Lo +2S combo looked like a sequence of awkward hops with one flaw after another. And of course his wild fall on the planned final axel generated ohs and ahs from the crowd.

Dai’s LP presentation:

Besides the jumps (4T, 3A, 3S), the first 50 seconds of his program was rather “simple” as if out of spontaneity and improvisation, which was exactly what the music dictated and what characterizes Blues, and with which he successfully set up a languid mood--even the way he raised his arms looked lazy. Then there came the drum and shortly the camel spins, whose entrance, foot change and exit went well with the music. During his circular step sequence, his arms and upper body highlighted the melody right on the downbeat (e.g., 1:51, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64QdXaZsUxs&feature=related), and his feet not only danced to the rhythm but also made small quick steps to reflect the synchopation (e.g., 1:57). Indeed, there were great uses of synchopation throughout his program (e.g., 2:25) with small steps or subtle kicks, so many I cannot name them all. The foot change and position change during his flying spin combination (FCCoSP), however, were not choreographed to the music, apparently as a trade-off for a level 4. As the music built up, he performed a series of jumps, which inspired cheering wows till the end of his straight-line step sequence executed with great musical precision, the climax of the program. Then the music calmed down, and he performed his final spins and ended with a pose that mirrored the starting pose, perfectly reflecting the musical construction of Blues—a cyclic form with reoccurring thematic/melodic materials. Variations unified by repetitions---great choreography, true to the music. And I cried, “Mommy, it’s over.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZVmV7c2TY4). I am no skating expert. All I could detect was a minor imperfection in his 4T (a small 2-foot maybe, I’m not even sure). I didn’t notice underrotation in his 3F till I read the protocols.
 
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Blades of Passion

Skating is Art, if you let it be
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Sep 14, 2008
Country
France
Oh be quiet Blubonnet, we get it. It's testosterone-central or bust for you.

@skatinginbc, that was quite a good look at the performances. Dai's 3Flip was not < , it was just a bad call from the panel. These people need some freaking geometry lessons.

Patrick Chan this season deserved to win TEB, 4CC, and Nationals. I will never consider him the Skate Canada, GPF, or World Champion of this season. Hopefully a time will come when skating to the music and providing an interesting viewpoint is actually worthwhile and making mistakes are actually properly penalized. That's what performance and sport are all about, the two things that figure skating uniquely bring together.
 

brightphoton

Medalist
Joined
Jan 23, 2009
I normally never watch men's figure skating, but since this is World's I might as well look at the top competitors.

The coolest one was Brian Joubert. The Matrix part was awesome, and he has fantastic jumps. I don't know why he didn't win, much less why he was off the podium.

Dai was kind of cool. I like the rock n' roll thing going on.

Yuzuru looks like a kid, but wow, can he jump.

Patrick seems a bit faster than the above three and his program was all right, but I don't get why his margin of victory was so much. I don't get it. Why is Brian Joubert over 20 points below Patrick Chan? I'm not a skater nor a regular watcher of men, so maybe I **just don't understand** but it's just not apparent to me why there is such a large gap.
 

Li'Kitsu

Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 29, 2011
Bluebonnet said:
^^^Through the untrained (as you said) and biased eyes!

Oh, and of course your eyes are completely unbiased, alright. Whoever doesn't agree with Chan's and/or Takahashi's PCS here, is - of course - just to stupid to understand the system or easily called biased. May it be the audience there, that large amount of fans, the french commentators, the british commentators, the german commentators, 'the Examiner' Jackie Wong, Tatiana Tarasova, John Kerr, Philip Hersh, Kurt Browning... okay, it gets tiring.


Anyway, what I actually wanted to say: skatinginbc, thanks for your analysis. To make a step away from my own 'biased' opinion, I had a friend of mine with me watching the mens FS, who really never saw a lot of figure skating before and therefor didn't comment to much about the jumps, spins or other technical things. But he's very musicial, talented for the piano, has a really good ear and feel for music in general. And he pretty much said the same: Chan didn't really skate to the music for him, he asked me rather quickly if that man had fallen behind the music, or if he just didn't have the right feel for that music (for him, it was obvious Chan was paying attention to the music, but he didn't manage to express it properly). Regarding the scores he said he couldn't comment on anything but IN, and as far as the opinion of a musician goes - they were judged rather strangely for him.
My friend wasn't going on about figure skating being predetermined, judges cheating the results or whatever (pretty much because he wouldn't be interested in that anyway, I guess), but he came to the result FS was not as much about artistic and enchanting an audience as he was always told it was. An opinion I don't like any better :/
 

gkelly

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Oh, and of course your eyes are completely unbiased, alright. Whoever doesn't agree with Chan's and/or Takahashi's PCS here, is - of course - just to stupid to understand the system or easily called biased. May it be the audience there, that large amount of fans, the french commentators, the british commentators, the german commentators, 'the Examiner' Jackie Wong, Tatiana Tarasova, John Kerr, Philip Hersh, Kurt Browning... okay, it gets tiring.

Well, we all have biases, especially when it comes to musical interpretation (both who does it best, and how much it should count for in the final results).

I wouldn't try to answer this question because I would feel influenced in my perceptions by the pressure to take sides.

The best we could hope for would be to get some knowledgeable judges or others knowledgeable about skating and how the PCS are supposed to be applied, who have not been following men's skating at all for the past two years, to watch and evaluate. Good luck finding them.

I expect that a knowledgeable dancer/choreographer or musician from outside the skating world might have different perceptions of the interpretation, choreography, and performance/execution (and nothing meaningful at all to say about the skating skills). And they probably wouldn't have preconceptions based on prior performances and results of these particular skaters. It would be interesting to hear their reactions to these performances, and the actual judges might even learn something.
 

skatinginbc

Medalist
Joined
Aug 26, 2010
My perspective is of course biased. I taught piano while I was in the graduate school and therefore Chan's prolonged disconnection to the music in that performance was a big no-no for me. In other words, I'm biased for putting a heavy weight in musical interpretation. And as a non-skater, I of course focus on "visible" errors. If we watch their performances from the eye of CoP, we might see things differently though. For instance, Dai's simple first 50 seconds can be seen as lack of transitions, and his reoccurring gestures or steps can be seen as lack of variety. The purpose of my analysis is simply to give an account from one perspective (i.e., musical point of view). I'm curious what the opinion would be from someone with a dance background. And I wonder if what constitutes good presentation (PE, IN, CH) in figure skating drastically disagrees with the ones in other performance arts. If that is the case, figure skating is running a risk of alienating the casual fans.
 
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dorispulaski

Wicked Yankee Girl
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Country
United-States
I wish that as in ice dance, that part of PCS for singles and pairs would be a component for Interpretation and Timing rather than just for Interpretation.

I am biased as a dance fan, so I think that if your timing isn't 100% correct, you don't deserve more than 6.75 for Timing and Interpretation.

http://www.goldenskate.com/forum/sh...ules-2011-2012&p=626496&viewfull=1#post626496

If you're off the timing for over half the program, it should be lower than that.

Why? Because it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.

and I got music == I got rhythm.

Being late to the music throughout the program is for me, a major failure in interpretation.

But I have to stress, that is NOT how the singles rules are currently written.
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
I'm curious what the opinion would be from someone with a dance background. And I wonder if what constitutes good presentation (PE, IN, CH) in figure skating drastically disagrees with the ones in other performance arts. If that is the case, figure skating is running a risk of alienating the casual fans.

There was a much discussed opinion piece after the 2010 Olympics by a professional dancer/dance critic/professor of dance who, I believe, was artist in residence at the University of Michigan at the time. She was flabbergasted that Yuna Kim won the competition over Mao Asada. Asada was the better dancer, and this artist gave a lengthy technical evaluation to support her opinion.

What the professor did not understand was that although Asada was the better dancer, Kim was the better skater. This was a skating competition.

I think the answer to your first question is that, indeed, components like interpretation and choreography are evaluated differently in skating than in dance. Despite Dick Button ;) there is no provision in the CoP for pointing your toes or turning out your knee, and in singles I do not think that the judges care very much whether your tango moves are authentic tango when tango music is playing.

As for whether this disconnect alienates audiences, I don't see why it should. True, professional dancers might snicker to see a skater struggle to drag her leg up into a Biellmann position. But the general audience is more moved by grand music and pretty positions. General audiences liked to hear Liberace tickling the ivories to old show tunes as much as they do a renowned concert pianist interpreting Brahmes.
 

skatinginbc

Medalist
Joined
Aug 26, 2010
components like interpretation and choreography are evaluated differently in skating than in dance...there is no provision in the CoP for pointing your toes or turning out your knee...the general audience is more moved by grand music and pretty positions.
Just as a set of universal grammar underlying the brain processes of verbal information is behind all languages, so is a set of universal laws or neural mechanisms underlying the brain processes of esthetic perceptions behind all arts. For instance, the esthetic appeal of symmetry (e.g., a "well-balanced" program in figure skating) is more universal than asymmetry (e.g., "frontloading"); perceptual problem solving (e.g., to decode Elena Berezhnaya's subtle sad face) is more challenging and alluring than one that is explicit (e.g., Yuna Kim's exaggerated angst). Each discipline of arts has its own "superstimuli", exaggerated versions of stimuli that have a tendency of eliciting positive responses. Examples of such superstimuli include: pointed toes in dance, deep edges in figure skating, etc. Some of those superstimuli (e.g., clean edge into a Lutz, underrotation that can be barely detected) elicit a learned response (i.e., an acquired taste) and cannot be universally appreciated by a wide audience.

When I said "figure skating is running a risk of alienating the casual fans", I meant: Some of its judging criteria might have overlooked the universal laws that underlie esthetic perceptions. Sensorimotor coupling (e.g., the feeling of being in the groove, the urge of clapping along the music, etc.) is universal when one's mind is engaged by a great performance, whether as a passive spectator of a great dance, an active singer of a great song, or a TV viewer of a great skate. It has been hypothesized that the so-called sensorimotor loop, which includes the posterior parietal lobe, pre-motor cortex, cerebro-cerebellum, and basal ganglia, is where a sense of beat arises, and a perceived beat is literally an imagined movement, and the act of listening to music involves the same mental processes that generate bodily motion (http://archive.cnmat.berkeley.edu/People/Vijay/04. Music and Embodiment.html). When we watch a performance that comes with music, the rhythmic properties of that music entrain neural oscillators that form an internal timekeeping mechanism in the brain. If the performance doesn't synchronize with the music, the brain either throws the music into the background or experiences incompatibility that stimulates negative reactions. As you said, "the general audience is more moved by grand music"; that is to say, enjoying the music is part of the fun and therefore it is not easy for the audience to throw the music into the background. So here comes my argument: Skating to the music is a rather universal criterion in assessing the artistry of a figure skating performance.
 
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Bluebonnet

Record Breaker
Joined
Aug 18, 2010
There was a much discussed opinion piece after the 2010 Olympics by a professional dancer/dance critic/professor of dance who, I believe, was artist in residence at the University of Michigan at the time. She was flabbergasted that Yuna Kim won the competition over Mao Asada. Asada was the better dancer, and this artist gave a lengthy technical evaluation to support her opinion.

What the professor did not understand was that although Asada was the better dancer, Kim was the better skater. This was a skating competition.
I think the answer to your first question is that, indeed, components like interpretation and choreography are evaluated differently in skating than in dance. Despite Dick Button ;) there is no provision in the CoP for pointing your toes or turning out your knee, and in singles I do not think that the judges care very much whether your tango moves are authentic tango when tango music is playing.

As for whether this disconnect alienates audiences, I don't see why it should. True, professional dancers might snicker to see a skater struggle to drag her leg up into a Biellmann position. But the general audience is more moved by grand music and pretty positions. General audiences liked to hear Liberace tickling the ivories to old show tunes as much as they do a renowned concert pianist interpreting Brahmes.

:yes: There is a saying, "Separated by professions is like divided by a mountain."

I respect and admire gkelly, who knows so much about figure skating but still presents herself as humble as she is!:thumbsup: Those who don't know much about figure skating probably should refrain themselves a little bit on critisizing with untrained eyes, especially with biased views.
 
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Joined
Jun 21, 2003
If the performance doesn't synchronize with the music, the brain either throws the music into the background or experiences incompatibility that stimulates negative reactions. As you said, "the general audience is more moved by grand music"; that is to say, enjoying the music is part of the fun and therefore it is not easy for the audience to throw the music into the background. So here comes my argument: Skating to the music is a rather universal criterion in assessing the artistry of a figure skating performance.

I think you've put your finger on what is wrong with this performance by Patrick Chan. In the second half of the program we have to fight to reconcile the movement on the ice with the music. After a while we give up and, as you say, push the music into the background.

Here is Michelle Kwan interpreting the same music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfluAux0Sf0
 

Bluebonnet

Record Breaker
Joined
Aug 18, 2010
I think you've put your finger on what is wrong with this performance by Patrick Chan. In the second half of the program we have to fight to reconcile the movement on the ice with the music. After a while we give up and, as you say, push the music into the background.

Don't forget that Patrick has gotten a -1 deduction on that already. That's more than 10% of his IN score. I'm not saying that I agree with what the judges gave to Patrick on IN in this particular competition. But I think there is a reasonable benefit of doubt. Patrick, as great as he is, might have gotten a few 10s in IN should he have not made such mistakes. From that perception, the judges might be thinking that he has already gotten enough deductions from his mistakes.

Honestly, I think Takahashi might have already used up all he is capable in increasing his PCS. In another word, he might have reached or nearly reached his PCS potential. In order to raise up his scoring, Takahashi has to increase his technical difficulty which he's already been planning to do next season.
 
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Joined
Jun 21, 2003
^ To me the question is not deductions for his mistakes. It is, how well did he interpret the music, according to the ISUs criteria for that component. In this performance (setting aside what we all know he is capable of), I do not see how his performance warranted 9.00 to 9.50 almost across the board. It seemed like he was fighting the music most of the way.
 

skatinginbc

Medalist
Joined
Aug 26, 2010
But the general audience is more moved by grand music and pretty positions.
Musicality and postures, hm, are they equally universal in aesthetic appreciation? Studies in neuroaesthetics have suggested that the brain processes them differently. Musicality is processed in a configural manner through the dorsal visual system and the premotor cortex and by activating sensoriomotor representations, whereas postures are processed in a featural way through the ventral visual processing stream including the extrastriate body area. Some naughty researchers purposely interfered the dorsal pathway of some subjects and the ventral pathway of the others with transcranial magnetic stimulation to determine their impacts on aesthetic appreciation for dance performances. The result showed that the dorsal pathway (the configural aspects like musicality) has a stronger effect than the ventral pathway (the featural aspects like postures). It explains why some dance experts or choreographers (e.g., Blades of Passion) who are greatly impressed by Yuzuru Hanyu's musicality are willing to forgive his less than perfect postures. I didn't notice Chan's "starfish hands" or the lack thereof until some people pointed out. And the pointed toes, like women's high heels, are some superstimuli that serve to arouse an acquired taste.

Back to Yuzuru, I think he demonstrated outstanding musicality in his LP--He lived in the music that he was skating to. His fall was abrupt--abrupt in a sense that it was almost like someone shook me out of a dream. I was totally drawn to his performance as if in a dream.

Of course, what made Michelle Kwan the goddess of figure skating is her perfect combination of musicality and postures. Her artistry has some universal truth in it.
 
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