- Joined
- Feb 14, 2018
She has above-average skating skills (especially for her age) and fantastic deportment — naturally elegant, lovely lines, knows how to hold a position (inasmuch as the choreo will allow) — but her performance and interpretation are still relatively immature/lacking. Which is normal: she’s young, R&J Leo voiceovers should be banned unless you’re going to go all in a la Junhwan Cha, and she’s literally the same age I was when the original Shakespeare was assigned in my literature class... and it was a much-repeated joke among the teachers that we had no ability to connect with the material and would have been better off with Hamlet (as we could relate to his emo-kidness).
Kostornaya is very talented, but in terms of interpretation and presentation, she’s no Satoko (and I am not a fan of Satoko) or even Kaori Sakamoto (who has a natural warmth and charisma that brings you into her performances, though Kostornaya is more inherently graceful). She isn’t a bad performer, but her performances have a slightly rehearsed and “absent the soul” quality that’s largely a product of youth, but she has potential. Her interpretation doesn’t feel original, in the sense that her movements don’t feel as though they’re originating from her and her sense of how the music should be expressed; she’s projecting when she performs, but she’s not 100% present while performing just yet. Again, immense talent and this is more to do with age/experience/finding and developing a unique artistic voice. There’s a bit of an over-rehearsed quality to her performances, sort of like what happens with Bradie Tennell — the dramatic gestures and faces aren’t organic to the moment but a product of rehearsing emotion, except Kostornaya is a better basic skater and performer than Tennell (she just has inherent gifts that Tennell doesn’t) and Kostornaya will become stronger in the next few years as she comes more fully into her own.
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