As promised: The transcription of Jackie's and Tara's comments about Kazuki on the Ice Talk podcast. Hope you enjoy it
Tara: So, Jackie, I’m gonna ask you, what event do you want to start with, is there one person in particular, or one performance, that you feel like we have to go back and talk about from the weekend in Russia.
Jackie: So, I want to talk about Kazuki Tomono, to be perfectly honest. Because, you know, if you follow me on Twitter, you know that I had some feelings about the results, the final results of the Men’s event. But, let’s not talk about the results. Let’s actually talk about his skating, which, you get… There is a certain amount of rawness, and actually, kind of unrefined quality about his skating, that when you intermix with his enthusiasm, and the way he just throws himself into the entire choreography of the programme, it really works. Like, so… his toes might not be pointed in the way that you wanted them to be pointed, but he is putting everything that he’s got into his programme, and… Frankly, the fact that at the end of the free skate, that he has the stamina to summon up the energy to put out of the most joyous choreographic sequences that there is in any programme this season, it’s just like… I couldn’t help but watch that programme and watch how invested he is in that programme, and be like… You know, this is just… This is really fun, great skating. So, you know, he won the short programme, which was amazing, he’s not known for being the most consistent skater in the world, and… We know he can do it, he was like 5th in the world, 6th in the world or something like that in that one season and… he’s been trying to get back to that form, right, and this was as close to that as we have gotten, especially in the short programme, and in parts of the free skate. So, you know… I thought he should have won, I thought that his components were not actually fairly scored. This is where, some of that, like ‘Hey, judges, there are five different components’, like, ‘Don’t score them all the same’. That’s one of the things when I looked at his scores and I was like: Not only were his component scores fairly even across the board, from skating skills through interpretation, but like… The fact that his skating skills were scored higher than his interpretation!? And his composition of programme, and his choreography… Like, that was mindblowing to me!? He should have been getting 9s with that programme.
Tara: He’s such an interesting skater to watch, because you’re right there, there’s that little bit of chaos (Jackie laughs)… Like, you’re on the edge of disaster sometimes (laughs). But it’s also what’s really refreshing, and it feels so genuine (Jackie says yes). It’s not like, maybe we can talk about this later as well, but I feel like sometimes choreography and interpretation, that can all be trained. It can all be like, ‘ok, now smile here’, ‘ok, now point your finger’, ‘ok, now…’, and while that can create something very beautiful, that’s very different than seeming like, a genuine, sincere interpretation of the programme, or whatever the storyline or whatever the music, or whatever the moment is. He’s one of those skaters that everything feels very genuine and sincere (Jackie agrees), and… when you look at the podium, and even some who were just off the podium, their strengths are very different, but perhaps the scores don’t reflect that in the way that it seems like they should to accurately judge what their strengths really are, and what maybe their weaknesses really are, and it shows up in a situation like this, where you feel like, ‘wait a second’ (laughs) from a performance standpoint, there seems to be clear separators, and you know, it really didn’t show up that way in the scores.
Jackie: Going back to your observation of Tomono’s sheer enthusiasm and sheer, sort of… I don’t know, abandon (Tara agrees) in how he skates… There’s maybe no better match of choreographer and choreographee as him and Misha Ge, who as we know from his skating, Misha’s skating, it’s as much as that, you know, wild abandon as you can get… You know, Misha’s is more of a refined abandon than Kazuki, but there is this sort of symbiotic quality about their choreographic relationship that really works, and you see a lot of Misha’s enthusiasm in Kazuki’s programmes but Kazuki makes it his own. Right? I think that’s the thing that works so well.