Polina Edmunds

Plisskin said:

Kinda sad how CBC and Eurosport had nice things to say about her, and her own country's network didn't.

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Eurosport for me is a dream when it comes to FS (minus Joanna and her critical commentary of course). Even Simon Reed who I have had severe dislike for in the past from his tennis commentary, comes up as so pleasant.

As for "atrocious", there were many who had the same feeling in regards to Weir's swan, so I guess people in glass houses comes to mind.

Plisskin said:

Kinda sad how CBC and Eurosport had nice things to say about her, and her own country's network didn't.

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Yes.

Hi, I am new to this thread, but I just wanted to add a comment on how suprising it was for me to hear the US commentators reactions to her free skate and win at the 4CC (total lack of enthusiasm I would say). I live in Europe, so I'm used to watching the skating on Eurosport and other European channels, and here she is considered to be a very very talented and very very promising young skater. I think it would be very sad if her own country federation and skating fans were to fail to appreciate her talent just because she doesn't fit the preconceived (and to my mind overly packaged) image of the "ice princess". Best of luck to her at Worlds and for the years to come!

To be honest, it's been really surprising to me how underappreciated Polina is. When I saw her for the first time during the Olympic individual free skate, I became absolutely taken with her. For me, she was like a breath of fresh air, with a very rare talent. The way this girl feels her music, the way she moves! I thought. I went on a video searching spree for all her past performances, and I couldn't wait to see more of her. I really thought everybody was going to embrace a skater like this, because to me her talent is so obvious and hard to come by. Despite the inevitable awkward phase that comes with physical growth (especially for such a tall skater), she hasn't disappointed this season and has only grown as a skater and artist. Some find her gangly and coltish, but for me that somewhat wild quality about her elongated elegance is very fascinating. She's frequently on the edge of just about to lose control over her limbs, but somehow she's able to move just the right amount to be expressive but without becoming messy, and turns that almost-wild quality into excitement for me. This season her skating has at times come across a bit laboured, and not as light as before, most likely due to having to adjust to her new body. But still, when she's on an stretched out, she moves so beautifully on the ice; every move is dictated by the music, every nuance interpreted. She's a rare dancer. For me, she has been the only skater since Yukina Ota that reminds me of Ota in terms of musicality, soft lyricism, and balletic grace. This practice video (yet another great one!) from 4CC really highlights all her qualities that draw me in:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=277yXznlFIA
Her LP is also surprisingly underrated IMO. It is being dismissed as a kiddie program much beneath a senior lady's level. But I just can't get over how the program is filled with subtle details that have been choreographed to every note of the music, and IMO only the most sensitive of dancers would have been able to pick them out and pull them off. When she does it well, it's effervescent and simply ethereal. Like the British Eurosport commentators said, it's like watching a ballet performance.

She is great, I think in figure skating in general is missing the importance of good lines and posture lately. You see old videos (60´s, 70´s) of figure skating and their positions are for a photography each second. Only Sasha C. and Mao care for an excellent position in the last years and I appreciate that about Polina, she is not perfect, obviously, but she is only 16, if she cant progress more it will be because she prefer to invest more time to school, and it is fine, it is her choice but russian girls will be investing all her time to figure skating.

shine said:

To be honest, it's been really surprising to me how underappreciated Polina is. When I saw her for the first time during the Olympic individual free skate, I became absolutely taken with her. For me, she was like a breath of fresh air, with a very rare talent. The way this girl feels her music, the way she moves! I thought. I went on a video searching spree for all her past performances, and I couldn't wait to see more of her. I really thought everybody was going to embrace a skater like this, because to me her talent is so obvious and hard to come by. Despite the inevitable awkward phase that comes with physical growth (especially for such a tall skater), she hasn't disappointed this season and has only grown as a skater and artist. Some find her gangly and coltish, but for me that somewhat wild quality about her elongated elegance is very fascinating. She's frequently on the edge of just about to lose control over her limbs, but somehow she's able to move just the right amount to be expressive but without becoming messy, and turns that almost-wild quality into excitement for me. This season her skating has at times come across a bit laboured, and not as light as before, most likely due to having to adjust to her new body. But still, when she's on an stretched out, she moves so beautifully on the ice; every move is dictated by the music, every nuance interpreted. She's a rare dancer. For me, she has been the only skater since Yukina Ota that reminds me of Ota in terms of musicality, soft lyricism, and balletic grace. This practice video (yet another great one!) from 4CC really highlights all her qualities that draw me in:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=277yXznlFIA
Her LP is also surprisingly underrated IMO. It is being dismissed as a kiddie program much beneath a senior lady's level. But I just can't get over how the program is filled with subtle details that have been choreographed to every note of the music, and IMO only the most sensitive of dancers would have been able to pick them out and pull them off. When she does it well, it's effervescent and simply ethereal. Like the British Eurosport commentators said, it's like watching a ballet performance.

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That quality of "wildness": what a marvelous insight. I hadn't thought to put it in those words, but it's true for me as well. It is the way she carries the line of the music to an unexpected place, and I am astonished, again and again. It is also an artist's gift to another, revealing what he should not otherwise have known. And this, from a young figure skater just becoming a woman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=277yXznlFIA
that fancam is marvelous! Thank you so much, Delicate skating, perfectly suited to delicate music. watch this fancam. I especially love the later half of her step sequence leading to her signature long twizzle ending with a gentle closing of palm. so delicate, perfectly suited that music texture.
In this LP, I also like, in the later half of the program, the transition to lyrical flute music, Polina's skating pacing also changed with music.

TSL interviewed Polina yesterday. Check out this little excerpt on their FB page where Polina shows her sass and throws a little bit of shade to the other skaters.

https://www.facebook.com/TheSkatingLesson

I love this girl more and more every time I hear her speak. I might have to make a trip to Sharks Ice to meet her... only 30 minutes south of me.

gravy said:

TSL interviewed Polina yesterday. Check out this little excerpt on their FB page where Polina shows her sass and throws a little bit of shade to the other skaters.

https://www.facebook.com/TheSkatingLesson

I love this girl more and more every time I hear her speak. I might have to make a trip to Sharks Ice to meet her... only 30 minutes south of me.

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Thank you. Polina is cool.


Mike

http://web.icenetwork.com/news/2015/02/24/110238472/four-continents-triumph-boosts-edmunds-stock


Forgive me if this article has already been posted.



Mike

Polina's skating reminds me of Yuna's senior debut at 16 (lark ascending, also a SP of contrast style). Soft, delicate, hypnotize arms, gentle closing of palms(Polina at the ending of her long twizzle sequence, Yuna right before her entry into her solo 2A), spiral, difficult debut season (Yuna's injury and Polina's growth issue) and braces

gravy said:

TSL interviewed Polina yesterday. Check out this little excerpt on their FB page where Polina shows her sass and throws a little bit of shade to the other skaters.

https://www.facebook.com/TheSkatingLesson

I love this girl more and more every time I hear her speak. I might have to make a trip to Sharks Ice to meet her... only 30 minutes south of me.

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This girl is a #truediva and I LOVE IT.

Full interview is out on TSL!

Really articulate for a 16 year old. Confident and sure of herself without being cocky and arrogant.

Most importantly, why has she not been asked to her school's prom yet?? I figure the guys are too shy to ask her.

I became a big fan of her skating, but now I just became a uber because I love her personality!

Is there a US Youngsters thread?

Anyway....Not sure if this video was posted here already. I found it randomly today and thought maybe some people would be interested to see her experience from Japan last season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9cutTccxpA

It looks like it used to be her YouTube account although it seems to be inactive now.

Thanks!

I also saw this funny video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i7j2wrH_UfY that Polina and her training mates made for David Glynn for his birthday a couple of years ago. I think Polina did most of the editing. I thought it was pretty hilarious and shows the quirky side of her!

I had no idea Polina could produce rap music and edit music videos so well. :sofresh:

I love the humorous and fun side of figure skating the most. It's important to see every so often what the sport actually looks like from the skaters ponit of view. Hard work and fun.

Polina’s Presentation

If some of the comments are any indication, Polina’s hair style and dress for the Fairy Dance program have not found favor with many fans of the sport, even those who otherwise love the program.

I’m sure, however, that her hair was not meant to make her seem a little girl, as some have suggested. Her long program is intended to be a ballet on ice, just as the Grieg program last year was. So, she wears her hair in a bun, as a ballet dancer would. The other day, I read that this look is considered to be “sophisticated and elegant,” or at least it is by dancers, and that it might be ornamented by flowers and braids.

As for the dress, I find it charming and graceful in its design and appearance. It rather reminds me of a flower, the color deepening towards the flare of the petals as they open. A flower would be an appropriate metaphor for a woodland nymph, with the wings on the back subtle in their depiction. The drape of the skirt with its variegated edge is especially effective in suggesting the petals of the flower and in complementing the spins and jumps.

Perhaps the objection is that a fairy is such a fantastic creature that you cannot approach it too closely, in too literal a depiction. Merely to have suggested it would have been enough. We should think of the performance, then, as not so much of a fairy as a young woman dreaming of a fairy realm. Some have suggested that the red dress she wore at the Glacier Falls Summer Classic last year would have been almost perfect for her, but this apparently was only for the interim, as she wore it for both the short and long programs at that competition.

There was another dress made for the long program, however, which debuted at the U. S. International Figure Skating Classic. Also pink, it was beautifully made, with little florets embroidered on the bodice and also…gold fairy wings on the back! Polina’s arms were bare and the skirt was filled and rounded, like the blossom of a tulip. Though quite elegant and more like a ballet dancer’s dress, it was withdrawn after this one competition, ostensibly because it didn’t fit well enough, but possibly because her team wanted a more subtle look. Had she persisted in wearing it, I can only imagine the discussion that would have followed.

There is the color, of course, a pink that few seem to like. Well, there is little that can be reasonably said about this, except that it works very well with her complexion and coloring, that it makes for a lovely flower, and that it is, I understand, her favorite color.

I confess that it is not my favorite color, except when she wears it.

Further Up and Further In

Polina’s recent interview with The Skating Lesson is a delight, by turns serious and thoughtful, light-hearted and funny, dusted with sass and shade, and wreathed always with smiles and laughter.

Towards the end, she speaks of the “Fairy Dance” music she’s skating to in her long program this season. She loves it, but she knows that some people do not. It’s taken from the score to the movie, “Peter Pan,” by James Newton Howard, and one of the pieces is called “Tinkerbell.” She wonders whether they’re just “bugged” by the name of it. If it was called something else, they wouldn't mind.

When you really listen to it, she says, it’s just beautiful and really her style. It’s very balletic and very lyrical. She’s not portraying Tinkerbell, but a woodland fairy, and it’s a coming of age piece. But that’s who she is, as well, someone coming of age.

She loves “The Nutcracker” ballet, with the Tchaikovsky score, of course, and wanted to find something with a similar effect. She remembered the exciting dances in it, “but then the snowflakes come out, then the Snow Fairy comes out.” It’s so gentle and pretty, so lyrical and beautiful to look at. That’s what she wanted for her long program, something different from all the dramatic pieces the others skate to, something pretty and gentle.

What Polina says here is so intriguing. Her voice is that which a young woman finds when she speaks to a lover for the first time, or about something she loves, hushed but not without a meaning found as much in the interstices between words as in the words themselves.

It is like a flower with a secret hidden within its tightly furled petals, only now being revealed as it blossoms.

As she goes further in and further up, she becomes aware, more and more, of whom she was meant to be, this one who will give expression to the music in dance, so that others might see and better hear. May her journey continue, now in a place far away, and may hearts be opened as she has opened her own.

Parsifal3363 said:

Further Up and Further In

Polina’s recent interview with The Skating Lesson is a delight, by turns serious and thoughtful, light-hearted and funny, dusted with sass and shade, and wreathed always with smiles and laughter.

Towards the end, she speaks of the “Fairy Dance” music she’s skating to in her long program this season. She loves it, but she knows that some people do not. It’s taken from the score to the movie, “Peter Pan,” by James Newton Howard, and one of the pieces is called “Tinkerbell.” She wonders whether they’re just “bugged” by the name of it. If it was called something else, they would be all right with it.

When you really listen to it, she says, it’s just beautiful and really her style. It’s very balletic and very lyrical. She’s not portraying Tinkerbell, but a woodland fairy, and it’s a coming of age piece. But that’s who she is, too, someone coming of age.

She loves “The Nutcracker” ballet, with the Tchaikovsky score, of course, and wanted to find something with a similar effect. She remembered the exciting dances in it, “but then the snowflakes come out, then the Snow Fairy comes out.” It’s so gentle and pretty, so lyrical and beautiful to look at. That’s what she wanted for her long program, something different from all the dramatic pieces the others skate to, something pretty and gentle.

What Polina says here is most intriguing. Her voice is that which a young woman finds when she speaks to a lover for the first time, or about something she loves, hushed but not without meaning found as much in the interstices between words as in the words themselves.

It is like a flower with a secret hidden within its tightly furled petals, only now being revealed as it blossoms.

As she goes further in and further up, she becomes aware, more and more, of whom she was meant to be, this one who will give expression to the music in dance, so that others might see and better hear. May her journey continue, now in a place far away, and may hearts be opened as she has opened her own.

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Totally agree but I hope she at least changes the dress, I don´t have any problem with it but all people were very clear that apparently it is horrible and it would be terrible to lose points because something so fool and easy to correct even with a simpler and cheaper dress.