Urmanov on CoP | Golden Skate

Urmanov on CoP

Ptichka

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Jul 28, 2003
Here is a link to an interview with Urmanov where he talks about his experience as a technical specialist.
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Thanks a bunch, Ptichka. Very interesting. Urmanov is one of my favorite people in the sport, although he was not my favorite skater.

Mathman
 
Joined
Jul 11, 2003
I'd like to see Urmanov skate to the Pirates of the Carribbean music and take the foppish character of Johnny Depp. I'm sure he would do it well. Can you suggest that to him, Pitchka?

Joe
 

dorispulaski

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The caller is such an important part of COP-it is really great to get Urmanov's take on being the first caller. The point about many of the skater's not doing full run throughs in practice making it harder to 'call' was interesting. I wonder why we are not asking the skaters to file a 'flight plan' for their programs? That might help untangle that when jojo is doing what appears to be a flip that she meant it for a lutz, and similar questions.

His description about how it is not just the one caller and that they have video replay available is much more reassuring about the process.

But I had to laugh about his explanation of his Turandot Costume. He had a Turkish looking costume because he didn't know Turandot takes place in China. However, he feels Turkey is in the right direction (presumably from Russia) so that is OK.


:laugh:

dpp
 
Joined
Jul 11, 2003
DORISPULASKI said:


But I had to laugh about his explanation of his Turandot Costume. He had a Turkish looking costume because he didn't know Turandot takes place in China. However, he feels Turkey is in the right direction (presumably from Russia) so that is OK.


:laugh:

dpp

Doris - I want to see that Turkish Prince wooing Turandot in Istanbul.:laugh: :laugh:

Joe
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
With all the secrecy surrounding the judging process, it's good that the people involved are willing to do these interviews. I hope that the ISU gives out as much information on the Grand Prix events.

MM
 

hockeyfan228

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Jul 26, 2003
DORISPULASKI said:
But I had to laugh about his explanation of his Turandot Costume. He had a Turkish looking costume because he didn't know Turandot takes place in China. However, he feels Turkey is in the right direction (presumably from Russia) so that is OK.

Turandot does take place in China, and Turandot is a Chinese princess in the story. But Timur and Calaf are the exiled King and Prince of Tartary (now Pakistan) and the cultural ties to the western Silk Road, of which Turkey was a part, are not that far off. Calaf and Timur are supposed to be foreigners in China.
 
Joined
Aug 3, 2003
Originally Posted by Mathman:
With all the secrecy surrounding the judging process, it's good that the people involved are willing to do these interviews. I hope that the ISU gives out as much information on the Grand Prix events.
ITA, Mathman. I was so impressed with and got so much info from Urmanov's interview and Joe Inman's posts on FSU. I hope the ISU doesn't put pressure on these people to keep quiet and that more will also give their opinions and convey their experiences working with the new system. To paraphrase Frankenstein's monster: Openness--Goood! Secrecy--Baaaad!
Rgirl
 

hockeyfan228

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Jul 26, 2003
DORISPULASKI said:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=tartary

The outfit should reflect Genghis Khan, as Tartary is not Pakistan. It is Mongolia.

Dpp

I can't find any reference that places Turandot in the 13th or 14th century. The time is generally stated as "legendary," if addressed at all. Currently, Tartary, near the Kyber Pass, is in Pakistan. But regardless, Calaf is a foreigner, and it would have been inappropriate for Urmanov to have worn a Chinese costume.
 

dorispulaski

Wicked Yankee Girl
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Country
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Currently Tartary is not a country. The Khyber Pass connects Afghanistan with Pakistan and has been the road of conquerors for as long as history. Pakistan at this time shares no border with Turkey.

Turandot occurs at a time when China had princesses and Tartary had kings, so I would assume that the 19th century would be the latest that I would consider a setting for it.

Here are some maps of Tartary through the centuries, including the 19th. It has definitely changed borders dramatically (but what hasn[t over 700 or 800 years? As far as I can determine, ethnically the Tartars would be Mongols originally. However in this day and age, ethnic purity is a myth anyway.
And Pakistan did not exist until after the end of the British Raj in the 20th century in any case.

http://www.earlymaps.com/asia/tartary.htm

Writers have gotten rather careless with the term Tartary. As you can see by the following lists of travel books, it has been located in Russia, China, Mongolia, and many other places as it has romantic connotations of the far East.

Here's a list of books:
http://i16.jp/books/Tartary.htm

One choice for Urmanov's outfit could definitely have been a Russian tsar! But not a Turkish sultan!

dpp
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Thanks, Doris and Hockeyfan, for the education. I was especially interested in this because the sports teams at the University where I work were "the Tartars." The symbol was a little Mongolian warrior with a leather helmet and a round shield and a short sword.

But nobody knew what a Tartar was. I guess they figured it had something to do with fish sauce and tooth decay. So a few years ago they changed it to "Warriors." They figured that you could still be Mongolian warriors with the new name.

That was interesting because, in keeping with the national trend, another school in the area recently changed its name from the Warriors, referring in this case to the Huron Indians, out of sensitivity to Native Americans.

Doris, I notice that one of the books that you list is "High Tartary" by Owen Lattimore. When I was studying Chinese history in college in the 1960s Lattimore (from Johns Hopkins) was a frequent lecturer. Lattimore was one of the key figures in the McCarthy/HUAC witch hunts of the 1950s. He had written a book titled "How we 'lost' China," which was supportive of the Chinese Communists. He was one of the main people in the State Department at that time who was targeted as a secret Soviet spy.

Mathman
 
Joined
Jul 11, 2003
Iv've been to the Kyber Path. It is what one sees in western type movies. Gun toting like it is going out of style.

I'm not at all sure that Calif is from that neck of the woods. There must be someone in GS who knows about Tartars. Rudolph Nureva is the most famous Taratar in recent history

I just don't see the connection between Tartars and Tartary

Joe..
 

Ptichka

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Jul 28, 2003
From Britannica:
Tatar, also spelled Tartar, any member of several Turkic-speaking peoples that collectively numbered more than 5 million in the late 20th century and lived mainly in west-central Russia along the central course of the Volga River and its tributary, the Kama, and thence east to the Ural Mountains. The Tatars are also settled in Kazakstan and, to a lesser extent, in western Siberia.

The name Tatar first appeared among nomadic tribes living in northeastern Mongolia and the area around Lake Baikal from the 5th century AD. Unlike the Mongols, these peoples spoke a Turkic language, and they may have been related to the Cuman or Kipchak peoples. After various groups of these Turkic nomads became part of the armies of the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan in the early 13th century, a fusion of Mongol and Turkic elements took place, and the Mongol invaders of Russia and Hungary became known to Europeans as Tatars (or Tartars).

After Genghis Khan's empire broke up, the Tatars became especially identified with the western part of the Mongol domain, which included most of European Russia and was called the Golden Horde . These Tatars were converted to Sunnite Islam in the 14th century. Owing to internal divisions and various foreign pressures, the Golden Horde disintegrated late in the 14th century into the independent Tatar khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan on the Volga River, Sibir in western Siberia, and the Crimea. Russia conquered the first three of these khanates in the 16th century, but the Crimean khanate became a vassal state of the Ottoman Turks until it was annexed to Russia by Catherine the Great in 1783.

In their khanates the Tatars developed a complex social organization, and their nobility preserved its civil and military leadership into Russian times; distinct classes of commoners were merchants and tillers of the soil. At the head of government stood the khan of the foremost Tatar state (the Kazan khanate), part of whose family joined the Russian nobility by direct agreement in the 16th century. This stratification within Tatar society continued until the Russian Revolution of 1917.

During the 9th to 15th centuries, the Tatar economy became based on mixed farming and herding, which still continues. The Tatars also developed a tradition of craftsmanship in wood, ceramics, leather, cloth, and metal and have long been well known as traders. During the 18th and 19th centuries, they earned a favoured position within the expanding Russian Empire as commercial and political agents, teachers, and administrators of newly won Central Asian territories.

More than 1.5 million Kazan Tatars still live in the Volga and Urals regions, and they constitute about half the population within the republic of Tatarstan. They are now known as Volga Tatars and are the wealthiest and most industrially advanced of the Tatar groups. Almost a million more Tatars live in Kazakstan and Central Asia, while the Siberian Tatars, numbering only about 100,000, live scattered over western Siberia.

The Crimean Tatars had their own history in the modern period. They formed the basis of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which was set up by the Soviet government in 1921. This republic was dissolved in 1945, however, when the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin accused the approximately 200,000 Crimean Tatars of having collaborated with the Germans during World War II. As a result, the Crimean Tatars were deported en masse to Uzbekistan and Kazakstan, where their use of the Tatar language was forbidden. They regained their civil rights in 1956 under the de-Stalinization program of Nikita Khrushchev, but they were not allowed to return to the Crimea, which had been incorporated into the Ukrainian S.S.R. in 1954. It was not until the early 1990s that many Crimean Tatars, taking advantage of the breakup of the Soviet central government's authority, began returning to settle in the Crimea after nearly five decades of internal exile. They now number about 270,000.
 
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