Alina Zagitova's sephardic flamenco
Alina Zagitova's sephardic flamenco
The final post about the performances of this season of the Quartet of Aces was prepared with great difficulty - I wanted to do something special, but my technique failed me at every step. Finally, your humble servant did “finish it”, and therefore with double joy presents to for your appraisal a review of Alina Zagitova’s short program.
For two weeks, the whole world of Figure Skating was excited by the debut of Alina Zagitova at the stages of the Grand Prix. There was something to worry about: at the competitions in France, the first in-person competition took place between two beautiful representatives of "4A" - Alina and Alyona Kostornaya. Both girls are distinguished by very component skating, artistry, graceful lines and high skill level, but at the same time they appear on the ice in completely different emotional colours, and therefore it was incredibly interesting to watch their performances.
In France, viewers also for the first saw Alina's short program in a competitive mode - before that, she had shown her only on some exhibition. As a musical accompaniment, the team’s choreographer Daniil Gleichengauz chose a very unusual musical composition: the song of Israeli singer Yasmin Levy “Me voy” - an incredibly emotional melody, angry vocals and heartfelt poems composed by Yasmin herself. I suggest that you, dear readers, familiarize yourself with the history of the work of this singer, because, as it seems to me, it will give a key to a deeper understanding of this composition and the whole production as a whole.
Yasmine Levy comes from a family of famous Israeli ethnomusicologist and folklorist of Sephardic descent who has been collecting folk Sephardic music from the Jewish diasporas of Turkey, Andalusia and the Balkan Peninsula. Sephardic is a Jewish nation that formed on the territory of Spain and Portugal, whose representatives were expelled from these countries at the end of the 15th century and it was then that they got their name ("Sephardic" in Hebrew - "Spaniard", that is, a native of Spain). It is believed that it was in the songs that the Sephardim retained their ancient language - Ladino, the number of speakers of which today is only about a hundred thousand people.
The collections of Sephardic folklore published by Yasmin's father later formed the basis of the singer's work, who continued and developed the work of her parents. Her mother, also trained in vocals, often sang songs in Ladino to the accompaniment of her daughter. As a teenager, young Yasmine began to study Spanish and flamenco music, which later led her to combine the ancient Sephardic song culture with a more “modern” flamenco. In her albums you can find both ballads in Ladino and songs in Spanish of her own composition using flamenco elements in acoustic accompaniment of Middle Eastern folk and modern instruments.
In a sense, the idea of combining flamenco and Ladino continues the history of these musical trends. Flamenco is a folk art of singing
(cante) and dance
(baile), which originated in southern Spain in the 15th century - that is, about the same time as Sephardim were expelled from Spain. Modern researchers believe that flamenco arose as a result of a fusion of folk Spanish, Gypsy, Moorish and Sephardic musical traditions. Perhaps the most significant influence on this style was made by gypsy music - still it is the Spanish gypsies who consider themselves true bearers of flamenco culture. Even for the traditional dress of flamenco dancers
(bata de cola), decorated with frills and frills, the gypsy dress served as a prototype.
Unlike Hebrew, Ladino is a purely everyday language. At home and on holidays, Sephardic women often sang simple love songs in this language without any accompaniment. The style of the songs by Yasmin Levy is close to this tradition - her sensual songs tell about love experiences with the frankness and simplicity inherent in folklore. Although "Me voy" is written in Spanish, it follows the traditions of Sephardic music.
EDIT: As it turned out, translations of "Me voy" surfing the Internet give a wrong idea of the meaning of the song. Zontag, Capitolina Delovaya, Lucee Liu, WinterSun, thank you very much for the comments in the comments (I hope I have not forgotten anyone).
In the song, the narration is conducted on behalf of a man in love, who parted with his beloved in heartache (so this is not Alina leaving somewhere, she portrays an abandoned girl).
link to picture
Alina Zagitova’s program is set in such a way that the skater’s movements go in unison with each separate phrase - after each line, the singer pauses dramatically, and Alina freezes with her. Moreover, all the jumping elements are arranged so as not to “interrupt” the voice. In fact, the choreography in this production can be divided into separate stanzas:
Quiero olvidar el aroma de tu cuerpo (I want to forget the scent of your body)
link to clip with Alina skating this stanza
Quiero olvidar el sabor de tus labios (I want to forget the taste of your lips)
link to clip with Alina skating this stanza
Quiero tener, por una vez (I want to have this time)
link to clip with Alina skating this stanza
... Una vida feliz ... Por eso, me voy ... (... Happy life ... So I'm leaving ...)
link to clip with Alina skating this stanza
Graciaspor todo lo que me diste (Thanks for everything you gave me)
link to clip with Alina skating this stanza
Gracias, gracias por amarme (Thanks, thanks for loving me)
link to clip with Alina skating this stanza
Pero no tengo ilusión Que tú eres mi razón (But I have no illusions that you are everything to me)
link to clip with Alina skating this stanza
Por eso, me voy ... (So I'm leaving ...)
link to clip with Alina skating this stanza
And, of course, the incredibly musical steps sequence in the second half of the program: here, for example, the toe pick steps, ideally falling into the rhythm of a guitar playing:
link to clip with Alina skating this stanza
And the final gesture, the plea "Do not leave me ..."
link to dramatic picture
The image of the skater, as always, is carefully thought out. Black and red, traditional colours for flamenco, were chosen for the dress, but the main colour is still black, emphasising the tragedy of the chosen theme. The dress is a black body with cutouts on the sides and on the back, on top of which is a black translucent guipure. In this outfit, those details that the designer already managed to test in Alina’s costumes from last season were reflected, for example, last season we could see how Alina goes with black lace and an asymmetrical neckline on her dress. As many have noticed, since the first demonstration on the show, the dress has added rhinestones - now they have completely trimmed the neckline line, a cutout on the back, a path from rhinestone on the side has been added, turning into a brush on the hip, but the sparkle turned out to be very refined and restrained, largely thanks to a dark shade of red rhinestones.
link to pictures
One cannot fail to note the magnificent work of Shiseido makeup artists who developed makeup for the new productions of their global ambassador. It is impossible to imagine Flamenco without bright, dramatic accents on the eyes and lips, but at the same time, the chosen products do not hide Alina's natural blush, and therefore the skin tone looks as natural as possible.
link to close up
Of course, the impression of her skating runs at the competitions in Grenoble was somewhat spoiled by strange judging decisions, which had already been discussed a lot and which affected both Alina and Alena, and Anna Shcherbakova, who competed a week later. Personally, I have no competence about the distribution of medal places. In the whole situation, something else is frustrating: firstly, it turns out that all three skaters who left juniors this year need to kill about the most difficult elements in order to get just normal points - normal, but not beyond, which you could count on with more objective judging. Secondly, there was a curious (in a bad sense) situation with the current world champions. Let me remind you that there are only 6 of them and they all have already managed to perform at the past stages of the Grand Prix. They were all appreciated more than favorably: the pair of Sui Wenjing Han Tsun received truly champion components, the dance duo Gabriela Papadakis-Guillaume Cizeron set a new world record, Nathan Chen was forgiven for falling from a triple Axel. Everyone except Alina Zagitova, who not only was not forgiven for, but also found fault with everything that possibly could, even with the prostrated Lord's lowered hand. This looks especially strange when you consider that of all the above, she is also the current Olympic champion. That is, titles help everyone, but one is arrested. Again, these are no complaints about the designated athletes, they themselves have nothing to do with this and generally performed very well - but if you award reputation ratings, then all at once.
The recent news is encouraging that the FFKKR nevertheless decided to express its claims to the ISU regarding the judging. In my memory, this is the first case in several years, which proves that the situation is really stalemate, even if such a clumsy organization like FFKKR reacted. Let's hope that this will bear fruit, and Alina wish to continue to skate for fun and joy to fans of Figure Skating, so that we can again and again admire her brilliantly delivered programs and their inspired performance.
I hope that soon we will recall this whole situation with the same sincere carefree laugh ...
link to picture with medalists laughing over the mistake in their decoration
And finally, we will admire the choreographic map of the program created by the Figure Skating Maps team:
link to the very nicely done skating maps of Alina's SP
-----
From:
http://sports.ru/tribuna/blogs/artinsport/2629757.html
Link to the other instalments of this IMO superb series of analysis:
Alina's own Cleopatra:
https://www.goldenskate.com/forum/s...ina-Zagitova&p=2473670&viewfull=1#post2473670
Aleksandra Trusova's Dragons
An Angel flew through a midnight sky
"Twilight" by Alyona Kostornaya
Her own Cleopatra
Defenseless beauty in the face of senseless cruelty
The avant-garde ballet of Anna Shcherbakova
Thanks for the translation! 
