Iconic programs that you find ... overrated

Mathman · Feb 25, 2017

el henry said:
I don't think a truly iconic program can be called "overrated". I don't care whether any poster thinks Torvill and Dean's Bolero is the worst choreography ever on skates and a total snoozefest. It had a profound effect on ice dancing. (don't know why? Did you watch ice dancing in the 70s and early 80s?... Thus, iconic. :yes:

I tried to look up the meaning of "iconic," but came away little the wiser as it applies to this thread. Is it "having a profound and lasting effect"? In that case John Curry's Don Quiote is not iconic, because no one has tried to skate like that since.

Maybe it ought to be more like, "this performance personifies what figure skating is all about." Or "this is the ideal to which all figure skating performances ought to aspire."

Amei said:
...to me 1 move that was always overrated was Michelle Kwan's spiral - a lot of the times she didn't have what I would consider great extension and it always included a super cheesy open mouthed smile.

A spiral is an edge move. Extension and smiling are just icing on the cake. Like this:

Michelle was not naturally flexible. She learned to get satisfactory extension by rolling her hip sideways, rather than by bringing her leg straight up. Sasha Cohen, who was a flexible skater, was able to get spectacular extension, but at the cost of bending lower at the waist and skating more on the flat.

Nicole Bobek deserves a lot of credit for Michelle's spiral. A very young Michelle saw Bobek skating and told her coach, "I want to learn how to do that!"

As for the cheesy smile, poster KwanisaLegend nailed it (below). This is Michelle teasing the audience; "You know you want it, right? This is what you came for, right? This is what you paid your money to see, right? OK, OK, wait for it, wait for it. Here it comes...here it comes...here it is! :love:

"

KwanIsALegend said:
It was where she put the spiral in her program, she knew exactly where in the music to put her spiral The audience always responded loudly because they loved it and looked forward to it. She smiled because she knew they loved it. The spiral was not easy. She held it with amazing control, her free leg never shook or wavered, she held an edge the whole time and moved from an inside edge to an outside edge.

Sasha Cohen also had a strong spiral, but never held it for too long, she opted for spiral variations.

Spirals are not appreciated anymore which is just sad. To me, spirals are figure skating, they exemplify the beauty of a blade on the ice, the flow and gracefulness of figure skating.

But, to each his/her own.

Yeah, by the time Sasha came into her own, 6.0 skating was gone and we moved to points. Sasha was, of, course, capable of doing an "iconic" spiral, but it was the changes of position that garnered the points. Since then the ISU has continually degraded the moves that made figure skating figure skating.

liv · Feb 25, 2017

I never got Plushenko's Tribute to Najinksi, or whatever it was. Actually, post 2002 his programs always seemed the same. Too much posing. I mean, if you want posing, Katarina Witt did it best in her iconic Carmen... but i will never doubt his competitive fire and ability. Much to admire about that.

Yuna Kim's Bond, les Miz, Gershwin etc. Never understood when people said she had so much emotion in her skating.

VIETgrlTerifa · Feb 25, 2017

Speaking of underrated, I think this Grishuk/Platov FD is by far their best material:

https://youtu.be/RKHVqOz9x0A

I think it gets over looked because they lost Worlds to Usova/Zhulin and happened in the transitional period between the 1992 Olympics and the 1994 Olympics. I'm not the biggest fan of G/P's with some exceptions like their Tango OD and I appreciated Memorial Requiem at the 1997-1998 GPF and they aren't my go-to ice dance team but that 1993 Worlds FD is one of the best FDs ever skated, IMO.

Warwick360 · Feb 25, 2017

karne said:
H

Yuna Kim's Adios Nonino - people kept calling it "passionate", and all I could think was, "so give me some expression!". Bland, boring, skated with the "I don't want to be here" expression.

Me on the other hand kept thinking and wondering what people were expecting instead. Personally, I much preferred "bland and boring"....rather than bombastic and bamboozling, with where can I start kicking my free leg in the midst of my footwork while miming every motion one can conjure up. :sarcasm:

Mathman · Feb 25, 2017

liv said:
Yuna Kim's Bond, les Miz, Gershwin etc. Never understood when people said she had so much emotion in her skating.

To me, the passion was in the skating. She didn't mime, make faces or act out a little story. But her actual skating was filled with passionate intensity.

She did make it look easy, though. :yes:

Warwick360 · Feb 25, 2017

Mathman said:
To me, the passion was in the skating. She didn't mime, make faces or act out a little story. But her actual skating was filled with passionate intensity.

She did make it look easy, though. :yes:

The mention of Bond, I thought sacrilege. I can understand trashing of Gershwin, even though personally I love it. But to trash Bond which basically was the highlight/news of Vancouver, for good reason, completely unfortunate.

Amei · Feb 25, 2017

TGee said:
And this is where profound differences in cultural context weigh in...

For Russians, and other eastern and central Europeans, a large toothy open mouthed smile by an adult is a negative at best, and at worst the sign of cognitive impairment.

And even in Canada, "a big American smile' may seem or be viewed as false or like too much showmanship attempting to distract from poor performance quality.

I have a lot of mixed emotions about Christopher 'the showman' Bowman who to me epitomizes the 'big smile' American skater type. So, while I expect skaters to do the best to carry a program regardless of the success or failure of any element, I also cringe a bit at glossy, smiling overselling...

When I think of the times that I saw Bowman in person, what stands out most was his almost pumping and preening stroke with arms out while popping a huge smile after every element. Something just looked wrong to me, and it detracted from his actually quite excellent technical elements and skills. And knowing in hindsight that he was very likely high on drugs during those skates [based on his admissions about that entire period of his career], just makes it all the more disturbing....

I'm American :biggrin:

TGee · Feb 25, 2017

Amei said:
I'm American

Interesting...

Well, cultural context is just an average representation, and Americans value their individuality:agree:.....doesn't mean that everyone in a country feels that way about it....

Let's just say that while many Americans [represented by el henry] respond positively to the 'big smile', other cultures don't necessarily get the same message 'on average' and it's worth making note of it...

Tavi... · Feb 25, 2017

Ares said:
I understand you ... my meaning of overrated was in some more colloquial meaning either way. Something that you don't like all that much or what you don't get or dig.

So you started a thread to criticize programs you don't like, which has led to people yet again criticizing the skaters skating them, and which has now descended into cultural stereotyping.

andromache · Feb 25, 2017

Russian and European fans respond very well to Adelina in Sochi and to Elena Radionova, both of whom seem to me to be the American "big smile" type of skaters (Adelina mastered drama and nuance after 2014, which is such a shame if she's done competing! I really love her now.)

OTOH, Asian skaters like Yuna, Mao, and Satoko seem the least "American" in that regard - their styles of expressing joy are much less OTT, which should appeal to Eastern European fans but doesn't seem to as much?

Let's not pretend that for many of us, our biases are less to do with cultural norms and more to do with who is from our country and who is rival of our country.

Mathman · Feb 25, 2017

Amei said:
I'm American

You're American and you don't like a big toothy grin?

What would Grant Hochstein and Caroline Zhang have to say about that?

http://figureskatersonline.com/granthochstein/site/wp-content/uploads/IMG_5255-300x225.jpg

timmybopper · Feb 25, 2017

Overrated: Sale and Pelletier Love Story. I really felt it came together only once, at the Grand Prix Final, where it was quite emotional, but other than that.. meh.

Underrated: Sale and Pelletier's Orchid (rachmaninoff) program. Ironically, they underperformed it at the GPF which led to them dropping the program altogether and returning to Love Story. I still feel like Orchid has moments that would've made it a masterpiece if they ever skated it clean.

Mathman · Feb 25, 2017

timmybopper said:
Underrated: Sale and Pelletier's Orchid (rachmaninoff) program. Ironically, they underperformed it at the GPF which led to them dropping the program altogether and returning to Love Story. I still feel like Orchid has moments that would've made it a masterpiece if they ever skated it clean.

Great choreography! I think it was too hard for them, though.

gravy · Feb 25, 2017

andromache said:
Russian and European fans respond very well to Adelina in Sochi and to Elena Radionova, both of whom seem to me to be the American "big smile" type of skaters (Adelina mastered drama and nuance after 2014, which is such a shame if she's done competing! I really love her now.)

OTOH, Asian skaters like Yuna, Mao, and Satoko seem the least "American" in that regard - their styles of expressing joy are much less OTT, which should appeal to Eastern European fans but doesn't seem to as much?

Let's not pretend that for many of us, our biases are less to do with cultural norms and more to do with who is from our country and who is rival of our country.

I noticed this when an unnamed Canadian poster (

) only presented examples of skaters that beat Canadians at the Olympics or Worlds. :laugh:

mrrice · Feb 25, 2017

Mathman said:
Great choreography! I think it was too hard for them, though.

My favorite Sale' and Pelletier program was Tristan and Isolde. I saw it live in 2001 and it was amazing. The crowd went absolutely wild when their scores came up. I think David cried....He is so good looking. They both were.

Arriba627 · Feb 25, 2017

el henry said:
I understand that. For years and years, I would never acknowledge any merits to John Curry's Don Quixote. He beat Toller!:curse: But it was iconic......

I loved Toller too, but that Don Quixote of Curry's was pretty amazing. There is something (in general) very magical about Don Quixote though. In fact I was just watching Alina Zagitova's D.Q. from her Nationals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_arZhxELY8

RABID · Feb 25, 2017

randomfan said:
I honestly never really liked Yuna's Les Mis like many of you. Her 2013 Worlds was clean and impactful and really a great moment, but the program itself is nothing special. I much prefer Adios Nonino.

I don't know... people were waxing poetic over that performance. Isn't that part of what makes a "program" iconic?
Personally I had wished that she had paired her Lez Mis with Send In The Clowns at the Olympics (I think SITC is an underrated short overshadowed by an interesting but disappointingly languid Adios)

KatGrace1925 · Feb 25, 2017

RABID said:
I don't know... people were waxing poetic over that performance. Isn't that part of what makes a "program" iconic?
Personally I had wished that she had paired her Lez Mis with Send In The Clowns at the Olympics (I think SITC is an underrated short overshadowed by an interesting but disappointingly languid Adios)

Send in the Clowns is actually the program that is most often brought up when people say Yuna was underscored. That program was incredible and deserves it's high praise. Of all the Yuna programs I rewatch that one the most. It is sad that Adois was her most emotionless program ever after such a beautiful short.

QuadThrow · Feb 25, 2017

KatGrace1925 said:
Send in the Clowns is actually the program that is most often brought up when people say Yuna was underscored. That program was incredible and deserves it's high praise. Of all the Yuna programs I rewatch that one the most. It is sad that Adois was her most emotionless program ever after such a beautiful short.

I have watched Yu Na's Sochi FS for 1000 times because it is so wonderful... I admire her cold and clean athmosphere on the ice. Every step was right with the best transistions ever.

The contrast to the sloppy and cheering Sotnikova was enormous.

andromache · Feb 25, 2017

KatGrace1925 said:
Send in the Clowns is actually the program that is most often brought up when people say Yuna was underscored. That program was incredible and deserves it's high praise. Of all the Yuna programs I rewatch that one the most. It is sad that Adois was her most emotionless program ever after such a beautiful short.

Send in the Clowns is the program that turned me from a "Yuna is good but kind of overrated" person to basically an uber. I generally have a preference for OTT skaters/performances, anyone bringing the drama, etc., but SITC is a program that makes me insaaaaane and that is in the legendary/iconic category for me, though it isn't for others.

Iconic programs that you find ... overrated

Mathman

liv

VIETgrlTerifa

Warwick360

Mathman

Warwick360

Amei

TGee

Tavi...

andromache

Mathman

timmybopper

Mathman

gravy

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mrrice

Arriba627

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RABID

KatGrace1925

QuadThrow

andromache

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