- Joined
- Mar 28, 2006
- Country
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I started watching figure skating on TV when I was a kid in the late 1970s (yeah, I’m getting on with age) and the first performance that I can really remember was Robin Cousins skating to Michael Jackson’s Don’t Stop ‘til You Get Enough in the gala on Lake Placid Olympics 1980. Radical stuff at that time, I think! It WAS different and caught my young mind completely and lured me into becoming a skating fan.
My personal musical tastes go more towards jazz, pop and rock than classical (or maybe “art” music) and in those genres I’m more into the alternative styles than mainstream pop - for example, I watched the last American Idol season and realized that I did not recognize ANY Kelly Clarkson songs. So, most of the pop music (understood in a very broad definition including rock and jazz) used in figure skating is not something that I would listen to outside that context.
I was very curious to see what happened when the vocals/lyrics became allowed, because I expected a lot of mainstream pop, but actually that did not really happen, did it? I think it went more the way of digging out the old warhorses and using them with lyrics. That first season featured a lot of those music cuts, but as some calculations in this thread have shown, things maybe changed a bit already last season. But I do still think that “pop music” is not used as commonly as I would have expected initially. And even in that category the tendency is towards using already familiar stuff instead of trying to find something new. Also, what I had particularly hoped for with the use of lyrics was that we might get rid of the (mostly rather horrible) instrumental versions of many a pop classic and thishas not happened either.
It feels to me that whatever the style of music, the tendency is towards choosing the safe and familiar option rather than going for something else. What I appreciate is clever/unsual/imaginative choices of music and good cuts of whatever kind of music is used. The most well-known melodies of Mozart/Rachmaninov/Tchaikovsky/Queen/Beatles/Lara Fabian stuffed into one performance is really never a very good choice?
I also started to think about the discussions of allowing lyrics (and consequently maybe more current mainstream pop music?) to increase the popular interest for figure skating. I don’t know whether this action will have the desired effect unless also the content and approach to skating programs changes a little bit. I thnik that until the early 2000s there was relatively little competition to figure skating in the arena of combining movement and music particularly on TV – some art dance (classical ballet, contemporary dance) fairly regularly, some ballroom, but relatively little else. (This was in Finland, might have been different in other countries!?) One of the reasons why I was drawn to figure skating instead of starting to follow art dance or ballroom was the variety skating offered in choices of music, style, etc. within the limits of competitive rules.
Reality TV brought along dance competitions and in connection with them all kinds of styles of dance from street dance to classical ballet and back again. Ballroom got a kick with Dancing with the Stars style programming etc. And what these programs offer is short themed routines set predominantly to various kinds of pop music, even when it’s ballroom. Compared to that figure skating starts to look – and probably also sound – quite dated and boring.
Although there have been a couple of even fairly successful skating TV formats, these have not really caught on. The effect of the dance boom (which is beginning to disappear also?) has not become really visible in competitive (or even show) figure skating. As a competitive sport it is certainly a world of its own, but I think there could be room for change.
Banning some style of music in my mind is probably not the way to go about. What I would like to see are better choreographies with more clearly defined content whatever the style of music used is. However, there is a strong tendency to particularly appreciate performances set to preferably fairly abstract pieces of art/classical music (interpreting the music as it is instead of telling a story or some other aim in mind) which gives relatively little space to alternative approaches...
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My personal musical tastes go more towards jazz, pop and rock than classical (or maybe “art” music) and in those genres I’m more into the alternative styles than mainstream pop - for example, I watched the last American Idol season and realized that I did not recognize ANY Kelly Clarkson songs. So, most of the pop music (understood in a very broad definition including rock and jazz) used in figure skating is not something that I would listen to outside that context.
I was very curious to see what happened when the vocals/lyrics became allowed, because I expected a lot of mainstream pop, but actually that did not really happen, did it? I think it went more the way of digging out the old warhorses and using them with lyrics. That first season featured a lot of those music cuts, but as some calculations in this thread have shown, things maybe changed a bit already last season. But I do still think that “pop music” is not used as commonly as I would have expected initially. And even in that category the tendency is towards using already familiar stuff instead of trying to find something new. Also, what I had particularly hoped for with the use of lyrics was that we might get rid of the (mostly rather horrible) instrumental versions of many a pop classic and thishas not happened either.
It feels to me that whatever the style of music, the tendency is towards choosing the safe and familiar option rather than going for something else. What I appreciate is clever/unsual/imaginative choices of music and good cuts of whatever kind of music is used. The most well-known melodies of Mozart/Rachmaninov/Tchaikovsky/Queen/Beatles/Lara Fabian stuffed into one performance is really never a very good choice?
I also started to think about the discussions of allowing lyrics (and consequently maybe more current mainstream pop music?) to increase the popular interest for figure skating. I don’t know whether this action will have the desired effect unless also the content and approach to skating programs changes a little bit. I thnik that until the early 2000s there was relatively little competition to figure skating in the arena of combining movement and music particularly on TV – some art dance (classical ballet, contemporary dance) fairly regularly, some ballroom, but relatively little else. (This was in Finland, might have been different in other countries!?) One of the reasons why I was drawn to figure skating instead of starting to follow art dance or ballroom was the variety skating offered in choices of music, style, etc. within the limits of competitive rules.
Reality TV brought along dance competitions and in connection with them all kinds of styles of dance from street dance to classical ballet and back again. Ballroom got a kick with Dancing with the Stars style programming etc. And what these programs offer is short themed routines set predominantly to various kinds of pop music, even when it’s ballroom. Compared to that figure skating starts to look – and probably also sound – quite dated and boring.
Although there have been a couple of even fairly successful skating TV formats, these have not really caught on. The effect of the dance boom (which is beginning to disappear also?) has not become really visible in competitive (or even show) figure skating. As a competitive sport it is certainly a world of its own, but I think there could be room for change.
Banning some style of music in my mind is probably not the way to go about. What I would like to see are better choreographies with more clearly defined content whatever the style of music used is. However, there is a strong tendency to particularly appreciate performances set to preferably fairly abstract pieces of art/classical music (interpreting the music as it is instead of telling a story or some other aim in mind) which gives relatively little space to alternative approaches...
E
But in a way it's good to realize that we have moved on and that things have changed (and in very many ways for the better, methinks).
Time for the safe and familiar and "serious". But is there a desired effect if everyone comes to work with a power suit on casual Friday?
hwell:
