2017 GPF Free Dance

[blancanieves]

The scoring here makes me believe a message has been sent to the U.S. judges "The ball is in your court", as far as the U.S. teams are concerned. Hubbell & Donahue are not getting marks they deserve because the judges do no trust them. They have a history of being error prone and they were given an opportunity at worlds, but blew it. They really should have gotten bronze here. They were hosed in the short program. The international judges will not elevate them until they do it on a national stage. If they win the U.S Championships, they will start to get the marks they deserve.

We may have become accustomed to degrees of lack of fair play in Ice Dance, but that doesn't mean I'm going to rationalize it as a justifiable practice. It's unacceptable.

Trust? History? Judge what's in front of you, dudes. That is the mandate for any sporting event. Not awarding performances the marks they deserve it's indefensible. At this point my prayers are not for skaters to do good work, but for judges to work with integrity. :noshake:

 

[klutzy]

^ Fair enough, although now thinking about it, how many ice dance lifts are actually lifts and not just the partner resting on a body part of their partner or clinging onto their partner somehow? Thinking about it, I'd say very few ice dance lifts are actually the male partner lifting his partner and not just supporting them though I don't watch every single ice dance teams lifts so i could be wrong.

Chock/Bates and Davis/White are two teams that feature lifts where the man lifts his partner--particularly C/B. I think it's not it's not coincidental that both Madison and Meryl are tiny. They're easier to lift and would have a harder time jumping a la Tessa.

 

[MelDee]

Someone made a point in some other forum that the French skate much more in parallel and with more open choreography / holds with each other than other teams and it makes it essentially easier for them to skate clean esp. if you compare with V/M who cross each other & mix it up often using less easy steps as well. The same person also complained I think on FS Universe that P/C use many crossovers ... well I am sceptical towards this claim unless this person would give me video that counted every crossover they make vs other ice dance couples so we have a legitimate comparison. They make it look so effortless, they can enthrall us so we easily forget about this important aspect of what this discipline is. Not sure how reliable all that is though, I can't quite make up my mind on that.

Here we go again with the "P/C's FD is way easier" argument. I don't actually believe it - just because they make it look easy, doesn't mean it is easy. No other team competing these days is able to achieve P/C's level of seamlesness. I find that V/M aim to showcase the difficulty of what they're doing, and they do so by including striking movements. It's like you're being constantly hit with transitions just for the sake of transitions, and truth be told, it makes them look a lot less sophisticated and polished. Contrary to that, P/C strive to make everything blend in, it's completely effortless, but no less difficult. As for the crossovers, I think they've eliminated quite a number of them since the first showing and I'm sure they'll continue in that trend in the upcoming events.

 

[Alex D]

I did catch up on the event now and I still feel, while the Canadians and French are technically perfect, smooth and surely the best skaters, their style is not how I see the future of Ice Dance. I am much more into the dancing of Madison and Evan, but also Madison and Zachary. They for me, show what ice dance should look like to reach a wider audience in future. It is fresh and young, it just advances the sport to a level that is more entertaining, easier to understand.

 

[Axela00]

I did catch up on the event now and I still feel, while the Canadians and French are technically perfect, smooth and surely the best skaters, their style is not how I see the future of Ice Dance. I am much more into the dancing of Madison and Evan, but also Madison and Zachary. They for me, show what ice dance should look like to reach a wider audience in future. It is fresh and young, it just advances the sport to a level that is more entertaining, easier to understand.

For me H/D have a very similar style to P/C

 

[alain06fr]

I did catch up on the event now and I still feel, while the Canadians and French are technically perfect, smooth and surely the best skaters, their style is not how I see the future of Ice Dance. I am much more into the dancing of Madison and Evan, but also Madison and Zachary. They for me, show what ice dance should look like to reach a wider audience in future. It is fresh and young, it just advances the sport to a level that is more entertaining, easier to understand.

Gabriella and Guillaume have been pushing ice dance to a new direction since 2014/2015.
Honestly, their meteoric rise brought about change and inspired many other ice dance couples, especially Madi and Zach (I fully agree with Axela00, they follow Gabriella and Guillaume).

This new approach of ice dance is driven by two major ideas:

(1) Try to not put a sense onto things but to let the sense emerge from the things.
This is the direct result of their collaboration and work with Catherine Pinard (very special coach in Gadbois, bringing so much!)
Typically, portraying characters like Chaplin or Moulin Rouge is completely out of the scope of P/C ice dance vision.

(2) Offer a modern style approach, where both woman and man dance and participate equally to the choreography (no more systematic focus on the female partner) with smooth and soft moves involving the whole body, i.e. upper part, arm movements, head movements, etc.

 

[blancanieves]

Gabriella and Guillaume have been pushing ice dance to a new direction since 2014/2015.
Honestly, their meteoric rise brought about change and inspired many other ice dance couples, especially Madi and Zach (I fully agree with Axela00, they follow Gabriella and Guillaume).

This new approach of ice dance is driven by two major ideas:

(1) Try to not put a sense onto things but to let the sense emerge from the things.
This is the direct result of their collaboration and work with Catherine Pinard (very special coach in Gadbois, bringing so much!)
Typically, portraying characters like Chaplin or Moulin Rouge is completely out of the scope of P/C ice dance vision.

(2) Offer a modern style approach, where both woman and man dance and participate equally to the choreography (no more systematic focus on the female partner) with smooth and soft moves involving the whole body, i.e. upper part, arm movements, head movements, etc.

H/D have embraced new ways of training and exploring performance/expression in Montreal, but they had that "equal participation" approach to choreography since their beginning as a team, with Camerlengo/Krylova. Their aesthetic has and will probably continue to evolve throughout their career, but both skaters were always evenly featured in the skating. It's one of the qualities that set them apart from the rest, from the beginning they looked like two extremely well-matched, equal forces.