There isn't much new to report, so I'd like to take this opportunity to write about something old. Something that goes back to the first time I saw Yulia about a year ago on youtube doing SL in Canada. My first thought was that if they put an ice rink in front of an orchestra, this kid could make her living as a conductor. Or for a low budget version, put her on screen doing SL without the sound, and have the musicians watch and play her arrangement of SL as she performs. We can only imagine. Nearly all conductors beat time mostly with their right hand, and express emotion mostly with their left (the "hand of the heart"). Yulia has developed a style which is a lot like this, where her feet trace out the actual notes and her upper body expresses her impression of those notes.
To appreciate this, watch only her feet and how they mirror the notes. Not the body, not the arms, just the feet. This is more than your everyday foot stomping or tap dancing. For example, she often reverses direction of the foot, or traces in the air with an elevated leg, or rotates sometimes to sustain a held note and sometimes to represent a cluster of notes. We can find nearly every note of the music in some foot movement. It is like a conductor's right hand, the literal hand.
But she doesn't stop there. Above this is another set of movements, related but independent, mostly arms and hands, but also head, full body and legs (which sometimes do double duty). These are like a painting that combines both a literal image of the subject and the feelings of the artist. Her upper body skating is a flight of fantasy. Like the conductor's left hand, the hand of the heart.
Her performances are like that style of music written in two different melodies that fit perfectly when played together. When we watch her, we watch mostly the emotional upper body. But if we ignore the upper body and look only at the feet as we listen carefully to the notes, we see that other set of movements that exist independent of the upper body and are just as interesting and difficult. She is objective and subjective at the same time. I find it almost impossible to watch both at the same time (my brain doesn't allow that, it prefers focus), but if you took either one away the overall effect of her skating would change completely. I often marvel at this. If I have difficulty seeing both parts at the same time, how can she actually perform them together? First she imagines, then she does. For many of us this complexity is at the heart of her unique appeal. Complexity and depth is why her performances seem fresh even after many viewings.
You can trace this back to her earliest work. Watch the green dress part of this one, concentrating on the feet (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opxjz_mfdf0 thanks to Lucky Cloud). It is from her Oriental period. Notice also the sense of structure in this early effort, even then she ended sections with disruptive elements (cascades and spins) in order to minimize the interference with musical flow, and to represent a slowing and stopping in the music.
In the footwork(!) section of SL there is also a third layer of movement. She is doing a very slow rotation of semicircles, within which the quicker feet and upper body layers take place. The slow rotation represents the fundamental feeling of the music. One of her great achievements in SL is expressing the 3 simultaneous layers of what we hear, which represent the music completely while enhancing its beauty. All with one body and one mind.
Since we can trace her style across all her choreographers and because her style is unique, this is her creation. Clearly she guards it carefully as she should. It would be a tragedy if it were lost. Suggestions and insights are welcome, but she won't compromise her style. Technique, once an obstacle to expression, is now a part of expression. If she can avoid injuries and the stress of her "job," then she will reach new levels in each year with each program. And if she can find music in time to properly prepare.
Did you once say something about verbosity, Isabel?
