2018 Nebelhorn Trophy Free Dance

[Winnie]

I really like both CP and PP, but at the moment I do give the edge to PP. However, I am mostly just thrilled to be able to watch so many teams with potential for greatness develop. Nats will be intense for sure.

 

[NoNameFace]

What continues to fascinate me is how they managed to portray the relationship between an artist and his art/muse so subtly: how genius more or less possesses a man when it demands to be realised. I mean this could have been cartoonishly literal in less capable hands and yet their interpretation is almost profound.
It also reminds me in a way of their Hitchcock FD where the director had a somewhat similar relationship with the "Hitchcock blonde" (another uncontrollable force? ), not the same thing by far, but a similar type of dynamic by a creator and that which can barely be controlled or even understood.
Paul here tries to grasp at his muse a lot during the program and I particularly like that part where he goes slightly mad (twizzles with the hands around his head) while his muse just follows freely and unperturbedly, alive and generous. It's all very interesting. I don't know how they were able to find the right tone, I think this program was a huge risk.

I do think that it still is a risk because of its complexity and way the relationship, the image of Van Gogh is portrayed like You have said - with individuality, but going in the same vein, both of them. They re-create the notion of an artist and the muse with freedom feel to it, free-flowing energy in how movement responds to the lyrics and melody that gives a personal, individual spin to each of them and a new colour to the whole interpretation layer. There are not many programs like that, taking risk in bold concepts and making them accessible yet still vivid, moving and true to the story/people portrayed.

After re-watching both performances, I think that what I take as the most unique is how they both managed to create an individual creation inside the wholesome resulting in 3-D experience all around watching them. Usually these days in ID my impression is that choreography, the concept of a program envisons both partners going always in the same direction, skating alongside each other, making that 'harmonious' image of both following the music and performing all the movement in the same way - Piper and Paul are doing for me the exact opposite of that, skating more towards each other, exchanging energy, emotions, impulses instead of maching all of that one to another. Both their programs have for me this strong emphasis on the reaction of the partner: to movement, to gesture, to expression, one thing is that choeographies accentuate individuality in the way they are moving, but another one is how the feeling, impression created by cumulation of their experiences as partners and how they exchanged them during performance rather than just skating and performing both in the same vein. In RD there are a lot of partnerings, positions that have no direct eye/face contact, but the alignment of their bodies, how Piper responds to Paul's lead is way more expressive and fits into dance character more; there is a lot of changing tempos reflected by their movement, often initiated just by one of them and then followed by another continuing in that changed tempo, such nuance is really unheard nowadays, the level of it. In FD their movement really resembles two people telling their stories that are connected with each other, they both express emotions separately yet with respect to each other; there is a lot of sensibility inside of how they build this artistic image, the story, parts in it, it is way beyond just a dance together for me. The reference to Van Gogh, who he was is pretty clear, yet it is never above what they are presenting on ice, it gave them a canvas, but not the paints - they took the person and the music theme to more abstract, universal aesthetic of expression in my opinion, focusing on relating to, voicing out general emotions like e.g. sadness, melancholy, belonging, closeness instead of just literally taking the theme.