Evgenia Medvedeva | Page 21 | Golden Skate

Evgenia Medvedeva

Roman09

Final Flight
Joined
Feb 21, 2014
I was intrigued by the CBC commentary, too. I'm not one to dive into the 'story behind the program', I prefer to watch what's in front of me and make up my own interpretation of a performance.

According to the CBC commentators, Evgenia's FS choreography is inspired by the hearing impaired, who cannot hear the music and have trouble appreciating figure skating as a result... so her program was designed to be expressive as possible to convey the musicality in a visual sense.

Anyone have more info about this?

From Zhenya's summer interview
The free skating was delivered by Ilya Averbukh in Novogorsk. He works unusually, applying a non-standard approach, it was interesting to me to observe how he is occurred by these or those ideas and how he embodies them on ice. In the first part of the program Dance for me wallis (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxO1csWNKmg) by the modern Polish composer Abel Korzeniowski, in the second – Allegro (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05tbnLH5wvg ) by the French self-educated musician Rene Aubrey, in the third – Korzeniowski's Charms (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbdhaOvB0a4) sounds. The statement turned out unusual. We touched upon the subject how it is important to hear each other, to speak language of love to life which is clear to the whole world – the sign language. We tried to inform the viewer how it is important to share the inner world, to open, to give the heat. My program is a flight of dream, a flight of fancy. Do you know how many of people have a hearing disorder which are deprived of opportunity to enjoy such miracle as the figure skating? More than two million people! We want that someone from them saw this program – and understood it. I was positive to this idea. If I am not mistaken, before in figure skating nobody used a sign language. It is pleasant to me what we made very much, I fell in love with this statement. The choreographer and the dancer Igor Strelkin who participated in the First channel’s project "Tantsui" also worked on this program. He speaks the sign language. Igor picked up and put the movements which I will speak the sign language. Ilya involved him on purpose that I could feel the program better, could convey its intent.

And Averbukh's
There the sign language is used in this program, Zhenya tells on it some phrases. But the program is not about people with a hearing disorder, in this history it’s important that all of us speak different languages, but the sign language is equally clear around the world. Our program – is a big message for everyone: let's hear each other, let's not be closed. At the beginning of the program Zhenya keeps the music in herself, we hear what just plays inside her and at some point she tears off her hands from her ears – and the music as if escapes from the depths of her soul, rushes into the hall, and we hear that occurs inside her. It, of course, frightens Zhenya a little as everyone is afraid to open his own world. And then she closes the ears again – and the music disappears, lives only in herself. But she has something to tell all of us – she tears off her hands from her ears without fear and tell us some phrases in the sign language that she would like to fly as a bird. I hope that she will fly by all the program quite so (smiles). It is the main idea, it is philosophical. The main thing is that we don't represent any specific character, but we address to a very hot topic. Zhenya manages to give it to the audience very well, she flies, she hovers over ice.
 
Last edited:

plushyfan

Record Breaker
Joined
Jun 27, 2012
Country
Hungary
http://rbth.com/sport/2015/10/28/ev...rusias-new-teenage-figure-skating-star_534897

Evgenia Medvedeva: 5 facts about Russia’s new teenage figure skating star
October 28, 2015 Anna Kózina, special to RBTH
Russia’s 15-year-old junior world champion Evgenia Medvedeva won her first senior Grand Prix Series event at Skate America, which took place in the U.S. city of Milwaukee from Oct. 23-25. Medvedeva outscored American skater Gracie Gold on her own turf, staking a claim to the leading position in women's skating this season. But who is this new starlet?

1. Medvedeva was brought to the ice rink in order to correct her bad figure

The future champion started figure skating when she was just three years old. While her mother had also been a figure skater, Medvedeva began practicing the sport not to continue the family dynasty but first and foremost to correct her figure.

"My parents wanted me to figure skate not because my mother had been a skater, even though this also played a role, but because my figure was not so nice," Medvedeva told the Russian Figure Skating Federation press office. "Actually, my shoulder blades still stick out, but I think that appearance-wise figure skating has made me more attractive."

2. Medvedeva's idol is two-time Olympic champion Evgeni Plushenko

"Once I saw Evgeni Plushenko perform and I wanted to skate like him," said Medvedeva. "I wasn't attracted to other sports."

3. Medvedeva trains with Yulia Lipnitskaya

Immediately after the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, when the whole world fell in love with the girl with the red coat from the "Schindler's List" program, Medvedeva was asked what it was like to share the ice and a trainer with the Olympic champion.

Despite her young age, Medvedeva responded tactfully and politely to the provocative question.

Evgenia Medvedeva during the exhibition gala at the 2014–15 Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final in Barcelona. Source: Alexander Vilf / RIA Novosti

"I always follow my own path," said Medvedeva. "I am happy for Yulia. But I need to achieve everything myself. Off the ice we all get together. We are normal people – we have fun, we talk, we have normal relations. On the ice there is certain competition and it spurs us on. But there has never been any enmity between us, and there never will be…”

4. Lipnitskaya could have performed Medvedeva's free program last season

It was Ilya Averbukh, successful choreographer, ice show producer and 2002 Winter Olympic silver medallist, who told this sensational story.
Russia’s figure-skating champion production line

"Lipnitskaya proposed this choreographic idea last year," the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper cites Averbukh as saying. "The program suited Yulia very much. We finished it pretty much ahead of time but Yulia's mother said that Yulia would not perform it. In the end it was decided to change the program… I'm happy that the program did not die. Thanks a lot to Evgenia for bringing it to life."

5. Medvedeva's trademark is performing jumps not tucked in but with her arm raised upward

"With her arm raised" Medvedeva can do the double axel (the jump during which she fell in the free program in Skate America), the lutz, the flip, and the rittberger. However, the figure skater does not include the rittberger jump in her program because it is not stable. Medvedeva has tried jumping with both arms lifted upward but feels more confident with raising only one arm. Also, the additional points that judges give for complicated elements make up part of the final score anyway.

Medvedeva has her own view on the expansion of her jumps' technical potential, and has admitted on many occasions that the axel is not her jump. That is why she will not practice the axel with three and a half rotations, which only a few athletes perform, including world champion, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva. Medvedeva plans on perfecting her jumping skills with the difficult quadruple Salchow.
 

Roman09

Final Flight
Joined
Feb 21, 2014
Evgenia Medvedeva: When something doesn't turn out, I'm becoming extremely angry and I work to spite everybody

The winner of the first event of the GP 2015/16 in ladies’ singles E.Medvedeva told the R-Sport agency about lack of the "classical" childhood and its alternative, about when she do to spite everyone and why she is not interested in other people's feelings of victories at Olympic Games.

Title: Restrained, but not cool

- Zhenya, I saw you for the first time at the skates in Gorki sports complex situated near Moscow when you were 13 y.o. Now you are 15 y.o., but also then, and now there is a feeling of adult skating. You have even an adult voice.
- All speak to me about an adult and very low for the girl voice.

- Even when you saw yourself the first at the first event of the Grand Prix - Skate America – the first senior competition in your career, your reaction was somehow too coolly.
- Frostily. I had no coolness – there was a pleasure, but I am such a person, I try to react objectively even to a victory. And objectivity is a restraint.

- What can force you to jump from a bench and to drop a bouquet of flowers?
- I tried to imagine myself – what should happen to make me explode with emotions! Interestingly, what begins euphoria?. Perhaps it‘s good that I don't know it so far, but maybe it’s bad in sports. And in ordinary life, euphoria is often next to me.

- At school?
- Well, no, of course. School estimates are a banality and they, by the way, demand a restrained reaction, but when I arrived to Tenerife, looked at the Teide volcano, so it was seemed to me that I’m on Mars. There was such a landscape. I have visited Mars! It was great and was more unusual than a skating rink. Or the first Moscow snow in November. When it drops out, I have an euphoria.

- And then reservoirs freeze, and there is a wish to skate on them …
- To spoil the skates? No, of course!

- So does the romance fade then?
- If to speak about the skates – yes. I too value them to doom them to the rough and nonprofessionally prepared ice. However, a walk on the winter lake is tempting.

Title: Victories have no side effect

- Have you long ceased to be a child?
- I didn't understand a question. I’m still a child.

- The Junior World Cup was won, the final of the Junior Grand Prix – too. At the senior circuit you also debuted victoriously. Don’t the titles accelerate a growing?
- In figure skating my childhood ended in the age of 10 y.o. Then awareness of all the gravity of sports in my life came to me. With the yard and other nuances I had no classical childhood. But I had a different childhood, which many might envy. I've never had the desire to go for a walk after school as other childrens have. I will better go home and I will gain strength there. All my friends were on a skating rink, and we played between trainings. We were children and we remain them. During week-end I after all went with mother to circus, theater, cinema, but not to the ice arena.

- And to listen to music at an entrance?
- At an entrance? It isn't hygienic.

- Your first junior event of the Grand Prix was in Latvia, and also victorious.
- Yes.

- The medal remained?
- All my medals are at me.

- Irina Slutskaya said that she has nearly been slept with her first medal, and then understood that it is not real.
- I initially knew that this medal is not real. But it is my achievement. The goal which I achieved and which I went further from. The wall of my house will be still enough for many awards.

- Is it possible to get used to victories?
- So far I still too early to compare, but I don't think that victories have a side effect. I mean accustoming. Levels raise all the time.

- After a victory at Olympic Games many exhale, and someone even finishes the career.
- But many after Olympic Games want to go and prove their leadership. If the person loves his business, he needs to leave and prove.

- The Olympic champion of 1994 Oksana Bayul and the bronze medalist of 2014 Carolina Kostner have been complained that this feeling of a debt to all, of a need to prove, of a freight stirred them in life.
- For me victories has never been a freight – only motivation. I have no feeling that I must, there is only an understanding that I can. And it helps.

- Do you represent for yourself that in figure skating it is possible to finish a career at the age of 18 y.o., even earlier, just because everything is already made.
- It is possible to win everything to that age, but to make everything – it is not. I never thought of it and I never won Olympic Games yet.

- Had you a talk those who won them with?
- No, and I don't wanna ask anybody about it. I wanna test it by myself.

Title: To compare programs is the same to compaire children

- Are any complications of the programs expected in the current season?
- Meanwhile it wasn't planned. Perhaps, there will be something connected with jumps, but I wouldn't like to open this subject. Perfection doesn't have a limit.

- The honored Russian coach Tatyana Tarasova remembering a way of the Olympic champion of Nagano-1998 Ilya Kulik told that firstly this skater was obedient, but then he started to argue. How you build a relationship with the coach Eteri Tutberidze?
- The question is a little bit incorrect.

- But is it possible to answer it correctly?
- We work with the coach by the principle of team – together. We never had any dissonance with Eteri Georgiyevna.

- Does she consult on you?
- Sooner she doesn’t, but I do. She’s my teacher.

- Where have you acting skills from, after all you don't allow excessive waves hands, artificially affected emotions?
- There is not a certain teacher, we discuss emotions with Eteri Georgiyevna, they train too. I didn't go to theatrical circles and I was at theaters long ago. There isn’t time for it.

- Maxim Kovtun admitted that he studied to change of a look in his present program for records of the ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov on the advice of the choreographer Pyotr Chernyshev.
- I too faced with similar, my choreographer Alexey Zheleznyakov spoke even to copy emotions of actors to some extent. It is important for me that they accurately explaine what’s necessary to show on ice, and then problems don't ever arise. I am a many-sided person and my mood often changes. I can skate comedy, cheerful, vigorous programs, but also lyrical and sad ones. Last season I had the first part of a program – lyrics, the second – almost aggression, and the final – again lyrics.

- What was the most important in "A melody of the white night" by Isaak Schwartz – your short program?
- To understand the feelings of the protagonist of the eponymous movie about love Russian and Japanese. I watched segments of the movie (1976, directed by Sergei Solovyov). The film is not dullish in any case, but it is unlike the modern movie. I was filled by the music only when I was told what to do. In the beginning I didn’t understand the image.

- What is closer to you now – Schwartz's music from the short program or Dance For Me Wallis by Abel Korzhenyovsky?
- This is the same to ask what child do you love more – son or daughter? I have no answer. It also concerns all programs of the past.

Title: I never give up.

- Is it important to adjust a program for the viewer?
- The main thing is to work out the idea of the program to the maximum ideal state. Even if the topic is not very modern, but being well treated it will take the audience. I'm not even about the music, but about skating itself, about unconventional choreography. Everything new is well-forgotten old at some points. Add any original versions, and it will be perceived as a new.

- Whose choreography does impose you?
- Of all top figure skaters, I have no favourites. Everyone is pleasant in own way: Mao Asada by the penetrating skating, Carolina Costner by madly beautiful skating, Patrick Chan by fine sliding, Kym Yu Na - by a high speed and excellent jumps

- What do you improve accented?
- Skating: choreography and speed.

- There is in fact six pretenders to a victory at the closest Russian National Champ in female single skating.
- The Russian Champ is always more difficult than the international competitions in structure of participants. But what will be there - it is not worth even suggests.

- After that season it can develop so that you will called in any TV-projects. Have you some preferences?
- So far early to think of it, it is necessary to prove to be in a season. Though I like dances very much, from classics to hip-hop.

- Do figure skating always bring you pleasure?
- Not just the job in figure skating brings me the pleasure, but its result. When you understand what do you go on ice every day for, there is a motivation and desire to do the part even more persistently, also the full satisfaction comes with an achievement of the purpose. When the job doesn’t work, it becomes offensive. But I’m not that person who despairs and throws the skates, shouting: “I'm leaving”. When something doesn't turn out, I'm becoming extremely angry and I work to spite everybody

http://rsport.ru/interview/20151030/875505938.html
 
Last edited:

tulosai

Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 21, 2011
Thank you as always for the interview and translation roman09!!! She always sounds SO mature!
 

witcher

Match Penalty
Joined
Jan 12, 2015
All these Russian kids sound so mature it's kinda scary, but at the same time most of them claim they are happy and having wonderful childhood. Good for them! :cheer2:
 

sabinfire

Doing the needful
Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 30, 2014
I suspect Zhenya knows English much better than we assume it. I would like to see her first videointerview on English

Do you know if she can speak English well enough to do an interview? Any specific reason you believe she might? Curious.

From Zhenya's summer interview


And Averbukh's

Thanks for the interviews behind Zhenya's FS this year!
 

tulosai

Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 21, 2011
Do you know if she can speak English well enough to do an interview? Any specific reason you believe she might? Curious.

She did say in one of her recent interviews the hardest thing about being in America was that even though she speaks some English some people had a hard time understanding her accent. So I think probably she at least knows enough that she was making an effort to 'get around' using basic conversational English English (by get around I mean small stuff like order coffee at Starbucks, ask people the time, say hi to Jason Brown :biggrin:and so on). Whether she really knows enough to answer deep questions in English I'm not sure.
 

Roman09

Final Flight
Joined
Feb 21, 2014
Do you know if she can speak English well enough to do an interview? Any specific reason you believe she might? Curious
I offer some quotes from Zhenya's Instagram page about it - all the quotes are original (not translated):

hutchmiller Was English hard for you to learn Evgenia?

jmedvedevaj @hutchmiller no, I know English better than my parents and school friends)))

from here: http://websta.me/p/1040652021748838012_332497154

timothy_zupanc Evgenia, I have a question? If you speak and write fluent english, then why did they have to translate for you during your interview after you won Skate America? @jmedvedevaj

jmedvedevaj @timothy_zupanc I know English not enough for understanding it on press conference or interview, but sometimes I can speak English, but it sometimes [crying icons]

from here: http://websta.me/p/1105041806487301854_332497154

And a translated quote from the recent interview:

- Then what was difficult?
- To communicate with people. I speak English, but not perfectly. And sometimes this ability is required because here is absolutely different lexicon, people just can't understand my accent.

Generally, it seems that on some level she knows English. On the Instagram page she writes in English more often than in Russian lately. Whether is it enough for video interview? We don't know definitely, but I think she could handle that. Though you shouldn't count on a good interview most likely, but at the level of the interviews with Sotskova, Radionova and Tuktamysheva - IMO quite may be. At least, she needs something to start with :)
 
Last edited:

sabinfire

Doing the needful
Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 30, 2014
Generally, it seems that on some level she knows English. On the Instagram page she writes in English more often than in Russian lately. Whether is it enough for video interview? We don't know definitely, but I think she could handle that. Though you shouldn't count on a good interview most likely, but at the level of the interviews with Sotskova, Radionova and Tuktamysheva - IMO quite may be. At least, she needs something to start with :)

Hmm... clearly she can read/write some English, maybe understand some spoken English too... but actually speaking it herself, perhaps not quite there yet? She didn't speak a word of English with me at Skate America, but maybe she is not confident enough to try (especially based on her quote about not being understood very well).

Oh well, I'm also hoping she tries an English interview soon!

Thanks for providing all the info. :cool:
 

Roman09

Final Flight
Joined
Feb 21, 2014
New interview with Evgenia. Could someone kindly translate? Anna P. also says a few words.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gCpPGzepc4

TV Reporter - 13 years ago this simple operation - tying laces on skates – Evgenia has been performing with the help of parents. Zhenya came for the first training to CSKA at the age of 3 and a half years old and since then she has learned not only to put skates on independently, but also filigree to execute the most difficult elements.

Zhenya - When I was still absolutely small and have been skated in CSKA – there were early trainings, approximately from 6 a.m. – at the time little Zhenya woke up at 4.30 a.m. to go to training – the child just sat and fell asleep on the feet. I can't remember it definitely – I was 5-6 y.o. probably – but it seems to me, it was heavy.

TV Reporter - In the ET group which prepared the Olympic Champion Yulia Lipnitskaya Zhenya has appeared the day after her birthday. The familiarity with the strict and too tall in her understanding coach at first confused the girl a little, but soon Medvedeva understood – Tutberidze is that coach who she needs – strict, but fair, which even after the many seemed perfect skate at the American stage of GP first of all criticizes.

Zhenya - I completely understand her – it’s necessary to tell about mistakes firstly – about everything that was not perfect. Then, of course, Eteri Georgievna praised me, but I absolutely agree with it - errors need to pay attention in the first place.

TV Reporter - The athlete which is only a month will [19th of November] celebrate 16 y.o., had long learned not only to perceive criticism correctly, but also not to be afraid of the crowded stands. When the audience on a skating rink can be counted on fingers then Medvedeva - on the contrary – gets lost. Generally Zhenia liked the stage of GP in America.

Zhenya - When I [in the childhood] watched TV, I wanted to feel it all the time – when people come [to ice] and so many people look at them and probably it is interesting. I was sitting and representing – so many people around and I come to a big arena. Well, of course, I was a small child and all this seemed to me much easier than it actually is, but that feeling which I imagined since the childhood has discovered to me.

TV Reporter - The next event of Medvedeva is the Moscow stage of GP where she will have enough support certainly, and then the Championship of Russia – last season she was the third at this competition, but because of age restrictions she could not go to Worlds and Europeans. Now Medvedeva grew to these events too. It is necessary only to be selected.

Zhenya - There is no hostility on ice, there is only a rivalry which spurs to work. Out of ice we are ordinary girls, ordinary children who like to have fun, to communicate.

Anna Pogorilaya - Even when Zhenya was in the junior national team, everyone already understood perfectly that when she comes to the senior circuit – she will be hoo what a rival. Well, all of us understood it.

TV Reporter - Not only friend-rivals watched for Medvedeva's maturation, but also experts from around the world. She has grown and everyone understand well that this lovely girl with an open and sincere smile need to be afraid of.
 
Last edited:

Roman09

Final Flight
Joined
Feb 21, 2014
http://websta.me/p/1110345118732365823_332497154
jmedvedevaj Guess, who's excited? Of course, it's me! I went to the show "Carmen" purposely to watch this masterpiece to the end. And of course I couldn't be not photographed with my beloved Masha and Lesha
P.S. This is not the last photo yet #Karmen #PetrovaTikhonov

more pics
https://pp.vk.me/c622021/v622021213/4a78e/dUkt_GngLmM.jpg (with Alexey Tikhonov & Ekaterina Gordeeva & Maria Petrova)
https://pp.vk.me/c624029/v624029321/4f9d0/mw_BAbTXCiA.jpg (with Maria Petrova & Alexey Tikhonov)
https://pp.vk.me/c622624/v622624570/5351c/4D-d713_1OY.jpg (with Alexey Tikhonov)
https://pp.vk.me/c622624/v622624570/53537/IdO_2h9Evuk.jpg (with Ekaterina Gordeeva)
https://pp.vk.me/c624029/v624029321/4f9d8/X8gPtTIIXlg.jpg (with her mom Zhanna & Ekaterina Gordeeva)
https://pp.vk.me/c622021/v622021213/4a772/ALlsPIcsbwY.jpg (with Tatyana Navka)
https://pp.vk.me/c622624/v622624570/53525/t08XYtR_ImA.jpg (with Alexey Yagudin)

Zhenya is watching the show (the ice play "Carmen" by I.Averbukh)
https://pp.vk.me/c622021/v622021213/4a762/GaaGJeXuVr0.jpg
https://pp.vk.me/c624029/v624029321/4f9e1/sd10708pMvc.jpg
https://pp.vk.me/c624029/v624029321/4f9ea/qKtcItp_PxQ.jpg (with her mom Zhanna)
 
Last edited:
Top