Thoughts about "Madame Butterfly"

lilahozi said:

This may be off tangent, but I'm tired of and irritated when Asian skaters (esp. the ones from Asia) skating to Madame Butterfly, Memoirs of a Geisha, or Miss Saigon whenever they do an Asian program. Expand your horizons!!! There are so much great authentic Asian music to use and adapt. It's a shame to repeat the same Westernized Asian stuff over and over again.

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ITA, for example, I always wonder what if Mao skates to this: https://youtu.be/n50iiHQgh7c
Totally Japanese.

lilahozi said:

This may be off tangent, but I'm tired of and irritated when Asian skaters (esp. the ones from Asia) skating to Madame Butterfly, Memoirs of a Geisha, or Miss Saigon whenever they do an Asian program. Expand your horizons!!! There are so much great authentic Asian music to use and adapt. It's a shame to repeat the same Westernized Asian stuff over and over again.

Click to expand...

Completely agree with you!!!! I once joked that it is probably in the ISU books that female skaters of Asian descent must at one point or another skate to Miss Saigon, Madame Butterfly, or Memoirs of a Geisha. I think some blame should be given to choreographers because this is somehow their idea of these skaters to show their culture when it is far from it. I also think they choose those music because they are popular and familiar to most people. This is why I admire Yuzuru for choosing Japanese music but then you have people commenting how they don't "get" the music. Yuna also mentioned how she worried that her "Homage to Korea" program will not be enjoyed by others because it is a style of music they are not familiar with.

^Homage to Korea was stunning, and Seimei is just glorious. I don't get what's to "hard" to understand about Asian music choices. I think Homage and Seimei should be a lot more palatable to the masses than some abstract piece of classical music. Plus, fs is a global sport and Asia (specifically China) has been on the rise, so its time for the audience to move away from warhorses and godawful, vocals-imbued Western programs and fake Asian programs.

Completely agree that Mao and other Asian skaters shouldn't indulge in the orientalist stuff too much.

I do think it is okay this time for me because: 1. Mao's rendition of Madame Butterfly is basically the best we're ever likely to see, 2. it's the first time she's gone that orientalist track, and 3. her team combined Madame Butterfly LP with Bie Mir Bist Du Schon SP, which is a Yiddish song. Now, that is a rarely seen cultural reference in figure skating.

But you know, if you expand this argument and take it to its logical conclusion, so-called 'western' skaters shouldn't skate to 'western' music at all in order to expand their horizons! How provincial is it for a 'western' skater to choose classical/balletic music! They are not expanding their horizons at all! Really, 'western' skaters should only stick to traditional African/Asian music, and they should stop trying to look 'western', too, so they should stop wearing those western-style looking fashion and shouldn't dye their hair blonde, for Pete's sake! And while we're at it, perhaps westerners should stop speaking English, French, etc., too, and only speak in foreign languages to expand their horizon!

Christina Gao did once skate to Yellow River Concerto in 2010-2011 season, and I was very happy for her choice.

lilahozi said:

This may be off tangent, but I'm tired of and irritated when Asian skaters (esp. the ones from Asia) skating to Madame Butterfly, Memoirs of a Geisha, or Miss Saigon whenever they do an Asian program. Expand your horizons!!! There are so much great authentic Asian music to use and adapt. It's a shame to repeat the same Westernized Asian stuff over and over again.

Click to expand...

hurrah said:

But you know, if you expand this argument and take it to its logical conclusion, so-called 'western' skaters shouldn't skate to 'western' music at all in order to expand their horizons! How provincial is it for a 'western' skater to choose classical/balletic music! They are not expanding their horizons at all! Really, 'western' skaters should only stick to traditional African/Asian music, and they should stop trying to look 'western', too, so they should stop wearing those western-style looking fashion and shouldn't dye their hair blonde, for Pete's sake! And while we're at it, perhaps westerners should stop speaking English, French, etc., too, and only speak in foreign languages to expand their horizon!

Click to expand...

That's not a logical conclusion, that's appeal to extremes/reductio ad absurdum, which is a logical fallacy.

My argument is that if Asian skaters want to play to their cultural heritage, there is a HUGE pool of material for them to tap into, and instead they're barely dipping their toes in the pool and half-assing it by using pseudo-Asian programs that have been used repeatedly before and are insultingly Orientalist.

Frankly, everyone in skating should scale back on the warhorses and "expand their horizons", which includes everything from skating to different styles of music to using music from different cultures. If you're gonna do ballet, choose something besides Swan Lake or Nutcracker. If you're gonna do classical, skip the Bolero, Scheherazade, and Firebird.