Hi, hamaguri, thank you for asking!:luv17:
I enjoyed FaOI Nagano very much. There were many skaters I love, and I also liked the choice of musicians for the second half of this tour.
The most impressive performances for me were collaboration pieces with Kotaro Fukuma. Especially "La Valse" by Stephane Lambiel and Fukuma was intense! It was like watching a short tragicomedy. First there were several pin spots moving slowly on the ice, which reminded me of people come and go at a party. Then Stephane entered there like showing up to the party. The spot lights gathered to him and he started dancing with his shadows. As the piano changed its tone, he gained speed and became more and more off balance, his shadows got blurred… then bang! Suddenly he and the pianist collapsed. It was like a portrait drawn by skate and piano, of someone young, brilliant and beautiful losing himself.
"Moonlight Sonata" by Johnny Weir was also impressive. A beautiful thing about watching figure skating with live piano is that you can hear the sound of blades very clearly. From the sound I could tell how delicately Johnny was skating to the music and how spontaneously the pianist was reacting to Johnny’s performance. I felt the same about Nobunari’s "Liebestraume" in Makuhari. I think having Fukuma-san made this year’s FaOI very rich. I also loved the way he noticed every detail of skater’s performance. When Johnny landed 3A in the last show Fukuma-san jumped up with joy right after he finished playing, raising both of his fists over his head. He is such a figure skating fan. Wish I could also see Yuzu’s “Ballad No.1” and Satoko’s “Un sospiro” with his piano… Hope he will come back to future FaOI.
Programs with Yoshida Brothers were very exciting too. Shamisen sounds very Japanese, but I found it matches well with many figure skating moves. The group number on “Rising” was really cool watched in person. The theme of this program was probably “thunder,” because I saw something like
patternized clouds and
the symbol between AC and DC on the ice, and “rising” sounds like “Raijin”(雷神 means god of thunder in Japanese.) Skaters in glaring gold costume moving fast in the dim light were like things in the rain illuminated by lightning. In Japan it’s rainy season, (I actually got caught in the rain in Nagano after the show...) so I think this program was nice reminder of a beauty of this season.
Many of the skaters showed their versatility in their two performances and it was very fun to watch. Seeing some skaters co-starred with their choreographer was also fun. In FaOI Nagano, you could see Satoko’s new program by Stephane, Nobunari’s new program by Jeff, Stephane’s new programs by Stephane, and Jeff’s new program by Jeff. Watching these programs in a short time, you could easily see how the characteristic movements of the choreographer were blended with other skater’s characteristics, and all of these programs were so attractive that I will want to watch again and again. I felt so lucky to witness these talented people together in a show.
There were many good performances, so I can still go on, but this post is already too long so I would like to finish here.
Hope I’ll be able to hear your thoughts after watching the footage of the show.
(if you have time, of course!)
And finally, thank you for reading my long and rambling post!
