Cappellini & Lanotte – nice program, nice to watch, but Anna with her straight legs, not using her knees at all, no deep edges in skating, only 28 second in close dance position, 57 seconds without touching each other, program itself on the level of I&K FD, but with worse skating skills. I am not surprised with the last position.
Weaver & Poje – in my opinion the best “dancing” choreography this year. Kaitlyn attacked sharpness and passion again (it was better than at COR). Andrew was not sharp this time and he was shaky during turns in both step sequences, Kaitlyn struggled in turns in diagonal step sequence also. Kaitlyn and Andrew are not so good technicians (not yet), that is why they are rather slow (with crossovers or simple parts between elements their skating would be fast of course, but I like that Krylova & Camerlengo are pushing them to that choreography to make a better dancers from these two, the team who can challenge top teams and even fight for Olympic/World bronze medal with content which deserves such medal). It is also obvious that Andrew’s free leg is not tightened especially in step sequences, he should work on it. But overall this dance is great, I like watching it. I am looking forward to see this dance at next competition. I guess it will be one of the highlights at the Olympics and Worlds.
Bobrova & Soloviev – while at the beginning of the the season it was more running during first half of the program, right now they start to fly across the ice. Bird story is more and more readable, white sleeves (in a colour of ice) are hinding great work of arms by Ekaterina watching it from big distance or in worse quality video. Stupid mistake in simple skating from Ekaterina which caused Dmitri’s fall is a good example that skaters have to concentrate for the whole program, not only during the most difficult parts. The mistake came after that soo fast part of the program in place when nobody expected a problem…..and it cost them bronze medal. The rest of the elements were clean but general impression was deleted a little bit.
Pechalat & Bourzat – improvement in speed in last part of the dance. I love all those details they are doing with head, arms even with toes. They had great unison also (they missed it in short dance). I like their Chaplin and Circus more that this dance, but their free dance was a highlight this time. I keep saying that Shpilband doesn’t fit them as coach, they lost technique and speed with him a little bit. If they really finish skating after this season I will miss them a lot. They are great dancers especially Natalie.
This is one of the couple who never achieved the biggest possible placements, but people will always remember them and even 10 years later skating fans will be looking for their dances at Youtube channel, I am sure of it.
Virtue & Moir – I don’t think that idea of doing Mahler number 2 was the best idea. But once it was done and they are skating to it…it is beautiful, not the program itself but their skating and dancing. I watched every free program more than once and after every program I sat a while and let the feelings from the program fly across my head….and Tessa and Scott’s program made the best impression, it was the strongest experience for me. They still have beautiful and deep edges, difficult program, they skate so close to each other (yes, they could have more close position which would make their dance even more difficult).
Davis & White – while Kaitlyn has the best “dancing” choreography, Marina Zueva created for their kids the choreography with the biggest imagination, sometimes it reminds me a fairy tale. I don’t find program itself too difficult looking at dancing qualities because of many and many running steps from both of them, because of little jumps from Meryl (it doesn’t press them to do edges work, which shows the quality of every dancer the most… everybody knows to do running steps, but only the best skaters have deep edges and can use it with grace), time they spend in close dancing holds under 30 seconds. Meryl improved her arm movements since last year, it looks lovely.
What I also like about top 5 teams here (which I also find top 5 world teams at the moment) is the fact that there is still something happening, there are no empty places in their programs, you can’t even close your eyes for one second without missing some element or some interesting moment. Every music needs to be expressed on 100 percent. The better music music you pick especially classical music, the more difficulty it takes to express it well. First 5 teams did it and I liked it.
. Most interesting is at Worlds 2013 SD (where he sat on the panel and V/M got lowballed by one judge) vs the FD (in which he did not sit on the panel and V/M's marks rose again). I'll get to this near the end of the post.
, thank you so much for this
