Pairs Choreography - Yikes | Golden Skate

Pairs Choreography - Yikes

Ladskater

~ Figure Skating Is My Passion ~
Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 28, 2003
Is it just me or did anyone else notice the lack of great choreography from the top flight of pairs teams? Paul Martini raved about Totmianina / Marinin's program - at least their presentation, but I did not think their choreography was all that inspiring. Neither was Petrova / Tikhonov's who captured the silver medal and worst of all was China's Zhang / Zhang. It was awful. Seemed disjointed and strange at times. At least I did not get it.

I was really disappointed in the performances period.
 

diver chick

On the Ice
Joined
Aug 18, 2003
This is one of the reasons that pairs skating is my least favourite discipline. More than any other, the pairs tend to concentrate in the technical content of a program and less on the choreogrpahy. Just look at the program Obertas and Slavnov skated - had they pulled off the technical elements it would have been a super program because it was so technically full that there wasn't really time for inbetween choreography, but because it didn't come off I found myself bored watching them because it became glaringly obvious how lacking in choreography it is. Unfortuantely though, I think the new system makes it more difficult for pairs skaters to add in the choreography because they are so busy packing in the technical content to build up their scores that they don't have time for choreography.
 

rain

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 29, 2003
I commented on this in the Pairs LP thread. An awful lot of the programs looked like a series of tricks - with O/S as the worst example. Many of the pairs didn't look like pairs out there, but like two skaters thrust on the same ice. That was one of the things I thought T/M actually did fairly well compared to the rest of the field - look like an actual pair. One of my fav skates of the night was Pang and Tong for the simple reason that they actually had a program (and got shafted on their marks, but that's another discussion). I was also proud of both Canadian pairs having something resembling a coherent whole.

However, several things really bothered me. One of the strengths of COP so far has been putting the focus back onto ALL of the elements, so that the side-by-sides weren't the be all, end all anymore. But in the pairs free I saw a horrific lack of anything resembling good pairs skill on the side-by-side spins (any of them) and quite a number of atrocious death spirals - many of them had awful positions - not far enough down, close to the ice, and many of them were far too brief - I wondered if some of them even counted. The skill levels on these elements seems to have gone down. Also trying to think of one great footwork sequence and am coming up empty. These are basic skills that should not be virtually absent from the final flight.
 
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