other kinds of female artistry

gkelly said:

Well, I think there are 3 main categories for women, or maybe 4 if you count those with no character and interpretation at all.

1) beautiful, lyrical, classical (and chaste)
2) sexy
3) perky

With subsets of each.

And then there's everything else, as listed in this thread, of which there are too few examples of each to count as whole categories. Maybe female skaters taking on masculine hero-style characters (like Witt's Robin Hood or Leonova's pirate) would be a small category of its own.

For men, over the last 30+ years that I've seen videos from, I can come up with a few more categories. Shall I start a new thread?

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There also might be a category called 'intense & dramatic' which would include Mao's Bells and Yuna's Danse Macabre amongst others.

For men, I'd add "The Villain" (sometimes the Charming Villain, not too common, but used by Rudy Galindo as Baron Rothbart, sometimes The Menacing Villain some of the more interesting versions of The Godfather (Candeloro's for example), and various Phantoms of the Opera.

We also have The Cowboy-Ryan Bradley, Samuel Contesti, Candeloro "Lucky Luke"

And the musical soldier - Ryan Bradley's Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy

Granted, the above 2 versions stray close to The Clown"

For the men, I would also add "The Patriot". Off the top of my head, I've only noticed this in U.S. skaters (Paul Wylie, Todd Eldredge come to mind). This is an observation, not a criticism! In Canada I simply can't imagine any skater performing to The Maple Leaf Forever! I'm trying to think of skaters from other countries who have done this and am drawing a blank.

I was reading a thread the other night which mentioned "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and I got excited, thinking it was this thread and that some female skater was actually going to interpret it! What a letdown when I realized my mistake.

With all this discussion re roles, I went to youtube and looked at some of Gary Beacom's old routines. How refreshing! I wanted to see "Please Clarify" which is not on there. Too bad! It was marvelous! I always saw it as a guy who thinks he's rather cool, gets out on the ice, realizes that maybe this is harder than it looks and then proceeds to discover how his body works on the ice, what he can do with his muscles, posture, movement, etc. It felt like dropping in on someone's private midnight session on a deserted rink. If anyone knows where this one is please share.

Scrufflet, I thought of another rendition that could go with "The Patriot"--Stephane Lambiel skating to Rossini's William Tell. These days, when all sorts of more recent heroes (and heroines) have crowded out the old favorites, a lot of people don't realize how popular William Tell's story was all across Europe. I suspect that it got revitalized in the beginning of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when the concepts of non-royal governments and of individual rights were gaining popularity. You could find Tell's story in kids' books in England, the U.S., and I'm sure in other countries as well. I'm sure the Swiss have long been proud of being one of the forerunners of the non-hereditary, republic form of government.

Otherwise, I think you're probably on the money with that observation, Scrufflet. Skating to patriotic music seems to be more common among American skaters than skaters from other countries. Aside from the obvious conclusion that Americans are maybe more out-there about such sentiments, might it also be that Europeans, especially Russians, have a richer culture of folk music, and so they have more ways of expressing their love of country obliquely? I think of the many times Rodnina and Zaitsev, for example, skated to folk melodies.

Part of the American Patriot thing comes from the Civil War--we keep having skaters representing either The Blue or The Grey-including skating to Gone With The Wind-Michael Weiss did it, as did Todd, and for that matter Ryan Bradley skated a backwoods guy to Appalachian music & Dixie at US Nationals in Atlanta. It definitely is an American guy thing.

dorispulaski said:

Stephanie Rosenthal!

SP 2006 Rockit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rnkku5aJzZM

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Oh my.. The spiral sequence in that has to be the best (as in, most entertaining/thrilling/amusing) I have ever seen! Very cool.

I can remember Alena Leonova injecting humour into her spiral sequence in one of her SPs... including making a gesture as though she was looking at a watch, i.e. assuring that she was holding it for the required number of seconds. What program was that? That made me laugh, and was my favourite until just seeing this one of Roensthal's.

Scrufflet said:

With all this discussion re roles, I went to youtube and looked at some of Gary Beacom's old routines. How refreshing! I wanted to see "Please Clarify" which is not on there. Too bad! It was marvelous! I always saw it as a guy who thinks he's rather cool, gets out on the ice, realizes that maybe this is harder than it looks and then proceeds to discover how his body works on the ice, what he can do with his muscles, posture, movement, etc. It felt like dropping in on someone's private midnight session on a deserted rink. If anyone knows where this one is please share.

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I don't think I'm familiar with that program, at least not by name. I assume it's a pro program?

I've mainly been thinking in terms of competitive programs. I think we do see some more variety from women in the pro context (or did, when there was more of a pro context in which to see it ). Though perhaps still not as much as with the men.

I was going mention Beacom as an example of what I think of as experimenting with the physics of blades on ice. Dmitri Dmitrenko is the other skater who particularly stands out to me as playing with edges and different ways of using the body to direct the blades in ways that may not be typical.
Oh, and Allen Schramm

I haven't seen many women experiement with edges in the same way.

And then there was a whole trend of experimenting with angular or other nonclassical body shapes,

which maybe started with Toller Cranston
and continued with skaters like
Igor Bobrin, Norbert Schramm, Jozef Sabovcik, more recently Stannick Jeanette, Ilia Klimkin

The closest female examples I can think of Olga Markova and Krisztina Czako (with choreography by Bobrin)

BTW, what do we make of a comparison between these two programs portraying somewhat similar characters?



Quite apart from whatever music or costumes they chose and the images inherent therein.

Women, on the other are more likely to get experimental with flexibility. E.g., Denise Biellmann from that 1980ish era. Lots more recent examples -- Sasha Cohen stands out -- and Cecelia Colledge to go back to the source. But most often the images of the music and costumes and general persona fit into the categories I named above.

gkelly said:

BTW, what do we make of a comparison between these two programs portraying somewhat similar characters?]

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To me, Carolina Kostner's program was mostly flying from one element to another, with little charter portrayal at all. (I and do mean flying -- whew!)

Zagorodniuk's program, to me, was the opposite. He tried to work in the jumps and spins as part of the character, which he maintained throughout with many humorous little flourishes.

Exactly. I want to see more of that approach to program construction from women -- regardless of the style or character being played. But preferably one that's not too stereotypical.

I never thought of this, but you folk are right. The two footwork experimenters I can think of offhand are Yuka Sato and Gordeyeva. Because Gordeyeva as a singles skater (which she never did in her eligible career, of course) didn't have many jumps and actually didn't have a lot of the singles skater's flexibility, she has done more varied things with how she moves across the ice. This may be one reason I enjoy her so much. She shows me something new and different.

gkelly, Gary's program was indeed a pro one. At this point I may have confused it with the 1988 pro routine which is on youtube. I searched for the other one but couldn't find it. There is a wonderful article in Dance Magazine, March 1, 1995 by David Gesmer which can be read at thefreelibrary.com. If you've never read it, it's right up your alley.
My apologies for not providing links but I'm mucking that stuff up today.

The problem I have with the classical style--despite the fact that EVERYBODY seems to do it now, where as before there were several notable exceptions--is that it doesn't show a joy of skating. Mostly, the "princesses" seem miserable. I remember Michelle used to pull this tortured face when she did her spiral--I guess she was showing us how her "character" was suffering from a broken heart or whatever--and Dick and Peggy used to rave about it. Good interpretation, I suppose, but I prefer a happy Tara, a tough Tonya or Irina! The fact that we are still raving about an unknown skater who did a non-medal routine 6 years ago shows the incredible lack of creativity of the skating choreographers, coaches and/or judges, I don't know which.

What gkelly says is true, I'm sure. Maybe those who don't skate the classical style have some flaws they have to cover up. But I can think of several skaters who don't have obvious flaws who would do better to get out of the princessy mode. Mirai, for one. She was 100X better as perky Carmen than she was the tortured Geisha or the princessy, themeless character she is this year. I believe her personality is perky, bubbly and fun. So who won't let her convey that on the ice?

when I think of not typical female artistry, Midori Ito and Irina Slutskaya comes in mind.
of the current ladies, although I do not like her skating, I think Leonova has set herself apart with her weird/kooky programs
well considering her body type of course, though I see Alena Leonova as a poor man's Irina Slutskaya