Eppen here, not feeling offended or "poor" at all (and am female; thank you for the sympthetic comments, though), after all I'm working in the academic world where discussions can actually be much harder and harsher (however, usually based on arguments and not just sentiment).
I also do think I have a right to expressing my opinions just like everyone else. And my opinion in all its sincerity is that apart from the Chopin SP (particularly the first version without two quads) I still get bored watching Hanyu after about a minute because he is always feels exactly the same (even with different choreographers). I'm sure that he feels different in performing the various pieces, but this is what I don't get from his performances. From my point of view, love is truly also blind for those who think Hanyu is versatile.
Hanyu is undoubtedly a great athlete with great jumping and spinning skills, but I sincerely think that his performance abilities are not at the same level. He seems committed enough for his themes, but somehow (again, for me) they always feel flat and repetitive. He has a weak upper body with poorly articulating arms - this was particularly evident in his younger days, but he has gotten better with age. He tends to drop his arms and crouch forward especially towards the end of the FS programs (SP not so much). The long second jump secuence usually contains only a litte bit of choreo and expression. His most effective vehicles for expression are step and choreo sequences where he lets rip.
Skating programmes are usually very similar for every skater and this is because of the way they need to be constructed. They are created to gain maximum points, to hightlight the best parts of the skater and hide their weaknesses - they are after all intended for competitions where everyone tries to beat everyone else. So, the choreograhies reflect the technical and performance skills of the skater more than anything else. Few skating shoreographers (if any in reality?) have distinct styles because of this. They are first and foremost creating patterns that match the skater and not unique pieces of art. In the dance world choreopgraphers set the tone and the dancers do what the choreographers want to do, a classical ballerina probably has to be able to do modern pieces. Plus the skaters have to feel comfortable with the music and costumes to perform more easily under pressure. Everyone has a tendency to want to be on the safe side and that is also part of the reason why we get so much repetition in musical styles and themes.
In addition, each skater has usually a sequence of elements which gets varied relatively little during their careers, particularly the difficult jump passes in the beginning of the programme. The most difficult jumps tend to have fixed approaches which do not get varied a lot, the rest can be done in different manners. You also have to think about placing the jumps in different parts of the ice to gain points, to set the pattern with enough changes of direction etc. Then you need to have a small break of sorts in the middle to get ready for the second series of jump passes. There's very often a wish to end the program pompously. In addition, certain non-listed elements (spirals, spreadeagle, Ina Bauer) are used to accentuate very similar kinds of moments in the music (the swelling violins come to mind first). The music cut has to somehow reflect these technical points and it depends on the skills of the choreographer and the skater how well they are able to mask the breaks and incorporate the elements into the choreography.
Chan, Hanyu and Javi are some of the very few single skaters who are able to handle both top technical difficulty and choreo more or less seamlessly and I like that very much in all three of them. The rest have still to rise to that level of excellence. In their cases, versatily would mean to me the ability to vary body movement, ability to skate to different kinds of rhythms so that it actually looks like you're skating to a rhythm and not the melody only, etc. Showing that they can really do different kinds of styles, extending the artistic ambition in addition to the technical content. Chan's most wonderful contribution is the continuous movement idea behind his choreographies which was really cool to watch particularly in the pre-Sochi years.
The vid on the Guys and Dolls program set to the Chaplin music is a good example of how things commonly work: the beginning fits almost perfectly, even the accent in the middle of the step sequence is in place and the beginning of the second part with the break is also set to slow part in the Chaplin which is okish (and they coincide because that's where the break has to be in order to do the second jump pass section). Both programs have the almost the same tech content in the beginning with the quads where Javi has been using the same approaches for ever, so not surprised that it all fits. However, the 3A-2T combo in between had nothing to do with music. In the second part the unison of the choreo and music goes all awry because in Guys and Dolls, it's fast and rhythmic to a jazz beat whereas in Chaplin the music is all slow and swelling with longer glides etc. The sad bit is that a great many skating programmes look like this: no connections between music, movement and performance.
I became a Javi fan with Black Betty and Barber of Seville in 2014 partly because for once there was a rock music piece that was not a) Scorpions or b) Metallica or c) some other iffy cliched piece. And partly because Javi was able to skate to the rhythm without any problems, making it look pretty much believable (some of the arm movements are way too pretty, though). And partly because there was a clear difference between Betty and Barber stylistically. And that you do not see every day, not necessarily even every season.
I never liked that much what Wilson did for him earlier, the Chaplin programme has just too many (weird) cuts in the music, too many stationary moments and some odd choreo bits that they never fixed, the 2013-4 programmes were just awful (Peter Gunn particularly). But for some reason the past two seasons have been very good and I sincerely hope they will get some sense in the Elvis program. Which I wait with fear and trepidation because a medley from an artist/band does not mean a theme, but usually just a mishmash of bits and pieces that make no sense as a whole, just like any medley of random songs. Elvis and Michael Jackson are kind of borderline cases in that respect, but do not like the idea much this far.
And the Latinness of the Zorro SP. Yes, the character is Latin, obviously, but the music and the skating are (apart from the first 10-15 seconds) mostly suited for a classical piece. The same also applies to the Barber of Seville - the character is Spanish, but the music is classic opera buffa with movement to match with no "Latin" in it.
And, yes, also I would be very curious to see how Javi would handle a heavy classical music theme. I'm not holding my breath waiting for it to happen though...
Add: Just only now watched the PW on Rachmaninoff and it looks better than the original actually...
PW is bluesy piece with a melancholy feel and Hanyu is doing it partly as if it were heavy metal and partly his movement would suit a classical piece better. Neither approach really fits the music in my opinion.
E
hora... this is what I have always wanted to see.
big time.
