Effective use of Non-Movement

[blue dog]

After reading the KW discussion, a poster brought up that non-movement can be choreographically effective. I agree--there are moments in a program when skaters can stop skating and just express (there's a moment in V/M's Mahler program where both come to a stop, and they look like a pair of newlyweds who are looking off together). However, does the COP reward this? Is the COP rewarding busyness for busyness' sake?

Of course, there are programs where choreographically, the non-movement was distracting (the first version of Malinina's Aladdin program had non-movement during the musical transitions).

 

[evangeline]

After reading the KW discussion, a poster brought up that non-movement can be choreographically effective. I agree--there are moments in a program when skaters can stop skating and just express (there's a moment in V/M's Mahler program where both come to a stop, and they look like a pair of newlyweds who are looking off together). However, does the COP reward this? Is the COP rewarding busyness for busyness' sake?

Yes. One of my biggest pet peeves is seeing some skaters cram their programs with transitions that are completely irrelevant for enhancing the choreography/interpretation of a program. I'm thinking of those otherwise pointless things like split-second spirals preceding jumps, etc.

 

[dorispulaski]

In ice dance, that stuff is "posing". It is used to do things like simulate stuff that doesn't translate easily to the ice, like rhumba or samba hip action. The skaters set the character of the dance that way because it is a lot easier that trying that kind of movement while skating.

It also lets the skaters catch their breath.

Consequently, if any credit is given (or not taken away, which comes to the same thing) it would be in the PCS under Choreo, Interp or Perf.

 

[gkelly]

After reading the KW discussion, a poster brought up that non-movement can be choreographically effective. I agree--there are moments in a program when skaters can stop skating and just express (there's a moment in V/M's Mahler program where both come to a stop, and they look like a pair of newlyweds who are looking off together). However, does the COP reward this?

It can be rewarded under the Choreography and/or Interpretation components if used effectively.

Is the COP rewarding busyness for busyness' sake?

Sometimes.

Stopping -- i.e., not skating -- is always going to be penalized or at best tolerated/ignored. It's a skating competition, not a standing competition. But in practice there are often one or more short stops built into programs for skaters to catch their balance and breath, especially with longer programs. If these are brief enough not to diminish the amount of actual skating in the program and used effectively with the choreography, they can be rewarded in the program components as I mentioned above.

Because there are scores for Transitions (i.e., all the skating moves and body moves that happen in between the elements and into and out of the elements), and potential rewards for including non-simple entrances and exits from elements, yes, skaters are often putting in extra turns and steps and flourishes in hopes of earning points. Sometimes it pays off for them, sometimes it doesn't.

There were already often rewards for doing this sort of thing well under 6.0, but there weren't explicit guidelines for judges or skaters so it kind of happened invisibly and unpredictably. Now that the guidelines are clearer (though still never perfect), there's more incentive for skaters to add stuff even if they don't necessarily do it well.

Sometimes it backfires. A difficult entry into a jump usually won't add points if the jump isn't rotated and landed. If it's easier for a skater to land the jump with a simple entry, that might be the better route for that skater to take.

The Transitions component rewards difficulty, quality, variety, and intricacy of the transitions. There's not much point in cramming in lots of brief transitional moves for the sake of variety if the quality suffers as a result.

Oh, and often skaters try to fit many variations into their spins to try to get higher levels -- sometimes they try more than 4 features hoping that even if they don't get credit for some they'll still be able to achieve better than level 1.

Step sequences also may rely on extra steps and extra upper body movements than the minimum required to earn higher levels because the skaters aren't sure they'll get credit for everything if they just do the minimum.

The impression of "busyness for busyness' sake" will often occur when less skilled skaters try to make up in quantity what they can't achieve through quality. The more skilled skaters can often earn credit for features or transitions without looking too busy. I'll look for examples later, but going back a few years Jeff Buttle and Shizuka Arakawa come to mind.

 

[Brenda]

Not non-movement, but this thread made me think of Krylova/Ovsiannikov’s Masquerade Waltz FD. Towards the end the music picks up and instead of doing complex footwork or highlight jumps/moves as traditional programs usually do, K/O simply glide across the ice and move their limbs in very exaggerated slow motion. That choreo in the program really emphasized the tension by contrasting the movement to the music, rather than matching it (their story was a man who comes home to discover his wife cheating and kills his wife at the end of the program, I believe). It was different, and quite effective IMO...but I'm not sure COP would treat it since it's not "obvious." K/O made it work, but a lesser team doing the same may end up simply looking like bad choreography rather than a deliberate artistic device.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtcrMzot9hc

 

[gmyers]

In Abbotts free skate to Muse I think there is a good example of this during the choreo step.

 

[burntBREAD]

Here's, IMO, an effective use of non-movement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCRaoNfU0r8&feature=player_detailpage#t=147s