I've been meaning to ask—so far, I haven't connected with H&L either. Can you share your favorite musical moments and choreographic touches with me? Help me learn to love it. What do you love?
Hey beki, I have a lot of opinions on this divisive program, so long post ahead
This is my favorite version of this performance.
For me, H&L is best viewed with an unobstructed view via fan footage, you get a real sense of the expanse and scope of his ice coverage, how massive his jumps are, how effortlessly he gains speed, and you don't get bogged down by details of facial expression (which is admittedly much more important for TV viewers, so it's still integral). You see the big picture, he's not doing two-footed, upright skating throwing his arms up periodically to obvious accents in the music in front of the judges, he's doing full body movement, getting low in the knees or stretching up high, using all levels of his body, twisting and turning his blades to the music.
Some people criticize him for not being balletic, but he's not telling a story through balletic gestures that happen to be on ice, he's using the language of figure skating.
His crossovers match the music, his transitions match the music, his jumps match the music.
Look at the
choctaw into a mohawk he does at the beginning before his 4S right on those low piano notes. The
step sequence is lovely and ribbon-like, flowing and stopping in unexpected places but according to the music, which of course he transitions right out of into
the flip: the excitement of the entry, the pick right on the change of music, and the gentle unraveling with a RBO twizzle to the melody of the strings (watch the timing of his blades!). It all seems natural, why wouldn't you save your 3rd jump for there instead of doing all 3 jumps one after the other? The
sweeping flow out of the 2S+1Lo pop 
and the spread eagle with arms aloft that he doesn't even direct towards the judges, the way he releases his hands. The
tensions building and then the cut to silence right as he does his 4T. How he
changes directions from backwards to forwards and back with the music into a perfect 3A+3T that lands right on that high piano note. The successive flowing movements right after that. The
flying entry into his sit spin out of a spread eagle that goes up and drops right as the music takes a lower tone, building tension.
The ChSq that actually uses a lunge, a (tired
) spread eagle, hops and changes of direction, a hydroblade, and an inabauer when all his muscles must be on fire. It's probably one of the most taxing and substantial ChSq in the field, requiring him to go high and low and high and low, which of course he then goes straight
into his final jump in the last 20 seconds of his program. Of course the final jump should be there! The music is so grand and driving, what other better way to punctuate the climax of the journey? And then transition using all the flow from his final jump to go into the
tap entry he does into his combination spin that matches great with the music. And just a little thing, but how he actually uses a tap for his flying change of foot in that final combination spin. The tap is so important so that it visually separates the spin into two distinct halves to match the music. Spinning through music changes drives me bonkers
and I don't recall him using the tap in any of his senior LPs. It's what he's doing that he's never done before, breaking up his first 3 jumping passes, the jump at the end of the program since 2011/12 season, the 4Lo!!!, and even little touches like that tap change-of-foot in his last spin and the way he
gently brought down his Biellmann leg at the GPF that makes everything seems so organic and natural but new and challenging at the same time.
No element is shoehorned in a way that compromises the music because of an easier jump layout. He's the only one among the top 6 men that is doing a layout that doesn't start with 3-4 jumps and then does the rest of them in the second half one after the other (only Javi does a spin before his last jump). Yuzuru's layout is actually most similar to Jason Brown's FS, and I think many of the challenges they face are the same.
Like others have said, when his jumps fail, this program fails too because more-so than the other top skaters, the jumps are important highlights in the choreography (that 4S+3T
). When people say "you can watch it without the jumps", what's the point of the jumps then? Why not integrate them into the choreography and make them important to the music? You should be missing out without the jumps, otherwise that's holistically not a very strong program. And I think this program shows that more than any other of his. I think even if you don't connect with the music emotionally yourself, there's so much to admire in how the program is constructed, the actually core of skating blade-ice vs body movements, the continuity and flow linking all the elements, and the challenge that this program presents.
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(worried)
