Maia Shibutani & Alex Shibutani | Page 24 | Golden Skate

Maia Shibutani & Alex Shibutani

I don't think it's just the lack of close holds, if you look carefully there's a lot of unintentional two-footing or toepicking happening because they can't generate enough speed and power on their own to get through the step sequence, which probably causes the panel to not count it as a clean turn.
 
It's fascinating to see how perplexed people have been with the levels. And then understandable I suppose that comments have shifted towards trying to come up with explanations which satisfy the levels given. Clearly, there were other obvious contributing factors.

Fans should pay more attention to who the judges and officials are at an event. In this sport it matters. Especially in ice dance. As I have commented previously, the technical panel is disproportionately powerful in ice dance based upon how much influence they can have over scores. At Nepela Trophy, it would be hard to conceive of a panel that could possibly have been more unfavorable for the Shibutani's.

The Controller: Alla Shekhovtseva. Notorious wife of Russian Federation president, Piseev. She was disgraced after the first Worlds in Moscow 2011 failed to produce a Russian dance team on the podium. The Shibutani's are like acid sprayed in her eyes. Their current world standing puts them right in the way of her and Russian ice dance's most important objective this season, which is to place two teams strongly enough to regain 3 places on their World team. Technical Specialist: Tomas Kika. His reputation for being shall we say "open to influence" is unfortunately well understood. Assistant Technical Specialist: Candice Towler-Green. British Skating Federation. There would actually be no such thing as the British Skating Federation if Coomes and Buckland did not exist.

Level 1 and 2 footwork? After years of training, all of the sudden the Shibutani's do not know how to perform or choreograph level 3 or 4 footwork. Yeah, right.
 
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Their footwork was choreographed to be level 4. They've had trouble getting the levels, particularly this early in this season, for years. I like the Shibs and want them to do well, but they do honestly have a lot of things they need to fix in their skating in order to get back to the level they want to be at.
 
FWIW It's been a while since they got level 1.

Last time was Nebelhorn Trophy 2010, their first competition as seniors:
http://www.deu-event.de/results/Nebelhorn_2010/NT2010_IceDance_FD_Scores.pdf

It was a mixed competition for them -- they had a dire SD (zero on twizzles level 1 pattern on one sequence) but was second in the FD to get 5th overall.

It's oddly similar to their fate at Nepala -- decent SD, bad (for them) FD. The saving grace is the low levels is limited to the footwork -- in those competitions noted above, their low levels were EVERYWHERE, spins, lift and footwork.
 
Yeah, even last season I believe they were getting low levels on spins and lifts at times. Thankfully their low levels have been only on footwork this season, so hopefully their marks go up earlier than they did last season.
 
I definitely agree with Tallorder that the panel can be too powerful in ice dance, and at this competition Maia and Alex were facing a firing squad.

Alla in particular has a reputation for manipulation that is one of the tragedies in this sport in my opinion.

Everyone being so confused reflects many things. Of course every team needs to work and does so striving to improve. But level 1 is basically saying that this technical panel was willing to go as far as they could to pull them down. This was many things including another example of the kind of ugly "cancer" that is killing interest this sport in my opinion.
 
For those who interested why their Diagonal Step Sequence (DiSt) was called level 1, I did a small analysis.

Main points:
1. Their DiSt was a second step sequence in the dance so, according to the rules, the steps and turns were considered according to Style B ruqirements.
2. Level 2 requirements for each partner according to characteristics of levels Style B are:
Step Sequence is not interrupted more than 25% of the pattern in total, either through Stumbles, Falls or any other reason
AND
Footwork includes at least 3 different Types of Difficult Turns (one of which being a Twizzle or Double Twizzle)
AND
At least 2 Change of Hold is included
AND
At least 2 different Dance Holds are included.

So to get level 2 you only need to have two different holds in StSq, with two change of holds. For ice dancers of top level it's not difficult at all.
There are only 6 types of difficult turns: rocker, counter, bracket, choctaw, outside mohawk and twizzle. So to get level 2 you need to execute cleanly AT least three of them. To get level 4, for example, you need to cleanly perform 5 types (including double twizzle).
According to ISU rules difficult turn is called 'clean' when:
1) entry and exit edges are correct (there should be a visible tracing of the curves);
2) the turn is not jumped or scratched.
If the turn is flat, jumped or scratched, the panel count it as simple turn. And very important: the depth and quality of edges is NOT RELEVANT to give credit to a difficult turn. It is assessed by judges in the GOE only.

So, let's see how many clean difficult turns each of them executed:

Maia: she intended to do BRACKET-CHOCTAW-COUNTER-TWIZZLE-ROCKER.
Bracket - was ok, not very deep but clean.
Choctaw - it was not a clean turn. If you will watch it in slow motion (I used 0.25x speed) you will see that she starts it with very deep inside edge but right before the change of foot her blade is going flat (at 4:16, they skate on fat blue line), then she puts her free foot on the ice on clear outside edge. The camera agle is not very good, unfortunately, to say for sure, because in the moment of the step Alex comes in front of her and we can't see her feet. But right before he hides her you can see that the edge is flat. Tech panel can see replays from different cameras, so they've seen it for sure.
Counter - in slow motion again you can see that she uses the toe of her free foot during the turn. So not clean too.
Twizzle - they do twizzle of two and half rotation. Clean.
Rocker - not clean. Again the same mistake: the edge is deep at first, but then it goes flat before the turn, the exit is not clean too. More than that, she jumped in the moment of turn (in slow motion you can see it at arounf 4:30).
The rest of the turns and movements are just a transitions, no more difficult turns attempted.

Alex: he tried to do BRACKET-ROCKER-COUNTER-TWIZZLE-CHOCTAW.
Bracket - clean, better than Maia.
Rocker - it's hard to say, but it seems like he helped himself with free foot too (like Maia did with her Counter). He did Rocker when Maia did her Choctaw, so you can wtch it yourself maybe I'm seeing things (but you need to watch in slow motion of course). Other than that the turn seems clean, the exit edge is very light but visible. So let's call the turn questionable.
Counter - seems like the flatest turn of the whole sequence. Not clean.
Twizzle - ok. Clean.
Choctaw - questionable again. The exit edge was scrapped, the quality of the video is not good, so I can't say for 100% sure. You can see it yourself (at 4:31).

So what we have in total:
Maia - 2 clean types of difficult turns (Bracket and Twizzle) + questionable Choctaw.
Alex - 2 clean types of difficult turns (Bracket and Twizzle) + questionable Rocker + questionable Choctaw.

So even if panel counted one of the steps I called 'questionable', or both questionable steps in case of Alex, the Step Sequence should still be level 1. And only if all questionable steps would be counted, then Step Sequence would be level 2 at max. Don't forget, the panel have replays from different angles.

Holds: they had Killian - Waltz - Killian - Waltz - Killian - Foxtrot. In total 3 types of holds with 4 changes of holds. Enough for level 4 style B step sequence. And it absolutely DOESN'T matter for the level of an element how close their holds are, because the 'closeness' should only be assessed by judges IN GOE AND PCS mark (Performance/execution).

So, I think level 1 call for their DiSt in this case is correct. But the main reason of that is poor quality of their steps, not the lack of holds or quality of their holds. The poor quality can be explained by tiredness (start of the season, end of the dance), or by lost focus, ot by the combination of both.
The more forgiving technical panel would probably call it level 2, but higher level for this sequence is impossible.

However, with clean steps both Maia and Alex would have 5 difficult turns each, and the requirements for level 4 will be met.

The video I used is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHaPQin4vwY

P.S. I usually don't do this kind of analysis because it takes too much time, and they are kinda subjective at times. So if anyone disagree with me on some points, please do tell!
 
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Lovely picture of Maia as she continues to do such a thoughtful job of engaging with the world beyond just skating

#Iamawitness antibullying campaign with support from PeaceLoveWorld, the designers behind the "Use Kind Words" shirt she is modeling
https://instagram.com/p/9R0ZLLS7kP/?taken-by=maiashibutani

Love their skating. Love the people they are.
Wishing them both a really great week at Skate Canada!
 
Snow63 said:
For those who interested why their Diagonal Step Sequence (DiSt) was called level 1, I did a small analysis.

Main points:
1. Their DiSt was a second step sequence in the dance so, according to the rules, the steps and turns were considered according to Style B ruqirements.
2. Level 2 requirements for each partner according to characteristics of levels Style B are:
Step Sequence is not interrupted more than 25% of the pattern in total, either through Stumbles, Falls or any other reason
AND
Footwork includes at least 3 different Types of Difficult Turns (one of which being a Twizzle or Double Twizzle)
AND
At least 2 Change of Hold is included
AND
At least 2 different Dance Holds are included.

So to get level 2 you only need to have two different holds in StSq, with two change of holds. For ice dancers of top level it's not difficult at all.
There are only 6 types of difficult turns: rocker, counter, bracket, choctaw, outside mohawk and twizzle. So to get level 2 you need to execute cleanly AT least three of them. To get level 4, for example, you need to cleanly perform 5 types (including double twizzle).
According to ISU rules difficult turn is called 'clean' when:
1) entry and exit edges are correct (there should be a visible tracing of the curves);
2) the turn is not jumped or scratched.
If the turn is flat, jumped or scratched, the panel count it as simple turn. And very important: the depth and quality of edges is NOT RELEVANT to give credit to a difficult turn. It is assessed by judges in the GOE only.

So, let's see how many clean difficult turns each of them executed:

Maia: she intended to do BRACKET-CHOCTAW-COUNTER-TWIZZLE-ROCKER.
Bracket - was ok, not very deep but clean.
Choctaw - it was not a clean turn. If you will watch it in slow motion (I used 0.25x speed) you will see that she starts it with very deep inside edge but right before the change of foot her blade is going flat (at 4:16, they skate on fat blue line), then she puts her free foot on the ice on clear outside edge. The camera agle is not very good, unfortunately, to say for sure, because in the moment of the step Alex comes in front of her and we can't see her feet. But right before he hides her you can see that the edge is flat. Tech panel can see replays from different cameras, so they've seen it for sure.
Counter - in slow motion again you can see that she uses the toe of her free foot during the turn. So not clean too.
Twizzle - they do twizzle of two and half rotation. Clean.
Rocker - not clean. Again the same mistake: the edge is deep at first, but then it goes flat before the turn, the exit is not clean too. More than that, she jumped in the moment of turn (in slow motion you can see it at arounf 4:30).
The rest of the turns and movements are just a transitions, no more difficult turns attempted.

Alex: he tried to do BRACKET-ROCKER-COUNTER-TWIZZLE-CHOCTAW.
Bracket - clean, better than Maia.
Rocker - it's hard to say, but it seems like he helped himself with free foot too (like Maia did with her Counter). He did Rocker when Maia did her Choctaw, so you can wtch it yourself maybe I'm seeing things (but you need to watch in slow motion of course). Other than that the turn seems clean, the exit edge is very light but visible. So let's call the turn questionable.
Counter - seems like the flatest turn of the whole sequence. Not clean.
Twizzle - ok. Clean.
Choctaw - questionable again. The exit edge was scrapped, the quality of the video is not good, so I can't say for 100% sure. You can see it yourself (at 4:31).

So what we have in total:
Maia - 2 clean types of difficult turns (Bracket and Twizzle) + questionable Choctaw.
Alex - 2 clean types of difficult turns (Bracket and Twizzle) + questionable Rocker + questionable Choctaw.

So even if panel counted one of the steps I called 'questionable', or both questionable steps in case of Alex, the Step Sequence should still be level 1. And only if all questionable steps would be counted, then Step Sequence would be level 2 at max. Don't forget, the panel have replays from different angles.

Holds: they had Killian - Waltz - Killian - Waltz - Killian - Foxtrot. In total 3 types of holds with 4 changes of holds. Enough for level 4 style B step sequence. And it absolutely DOESN'T matter for the level of an element how close their holds are, because the 'closeness' should only be assessed by judges IN GOE AND PCS mark (Performance/execution).

So, I think level 1 call for their DiSt in this case is correct. But the main reason of that is poor quality of their steps, not the lack of holds or quality of their holds. The poor quality can be explained by tiredness (start of the season, end of the dance), or by lost focus, ot by the combination of both.
The more forgiving technical panel would probably call it level 2, but higher level for this sequence is impossible.

However, with clean steps both Maia and Alex would have 5 difficult turns each, and the requirements for level 4 will be met.

The video I used is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHaPQin4vwY

P.S. I usually don't do this kind of analysis because it takes too much time, and they are kinda subjective at times. So if anyone disagree with me on some points, please do tell!
Click to expand...

Thanks, interesting. I hope they can to fix that at Skate Canada.
 
Google translation of Marina's interview here, the part dealing with the Shibs:
http://www.gazeta.ru/sport/2015/10/27/a_7848239.shtml


- Others your students - Americans Maia and Alex Shibutani, who will compete at the [Skate] Canada [GP] stage. For the free dance, you invited choreographer - Peter Chernyshov.
- I am very grateful to Peter, he brought them to a whole new style for them. Of course, the program is changing. That does not apply to its spirit, no. But in modern dance, choreographer can not make the entire setting inside and out. He can give the direction, style, idea. But to make the competitive program of the desired level of difficulty in a week or two is not possible. It takes more time. Right now so complex and confusing [are the rules] that you have to be almost a lawyer immediately to read them properly.

- How do you select for Shibutani short dance?
- It was born from the idea, this choreographic miniature on the music from the ballet "Coppelia". I wished that there was a plot and characters. I like how they perform: with humor, interesting
Click to expand...
 
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Impressive analysis! Really! It sheds some needed light on their mediocre showing at Nepala and is encouraging that these kind of issues are fix-able. They are usually so precise, sometimes too much so, in their dance. Were they overcompensating trying to focus too much on emotion and not enough on the elements. I am hopeful that they have digested this and will come back strong at SA.
Snow63 said:
For those who interested why their Diagonal Step Sequence (DiSt) was called level 1, I did a small analysis.

Main points:
1. Their DiSt was a second step sequence in the dance so, according to the rules, the steps and turns were considered according to Style B ruqirements.
2. Level 2 requirements for each partner according to characteristics of levels Style B are:
Step Sequence is not interrupted more than 25% of the pattern in total, either through Stumbles, Falls or any other reason
AND
Footwork includes at least 3 different Types of Difficult Turns (one of which being a Twizzle or Double Twizzle)
AND
At least 2 Change of Hold is included
AND
At least 2 different Dance Holds are included.

So to get level 2 you only need to have two different holds in StSq, with two change of holds. For ice dancers of top level it's not difficult at all.
There are only 6 types of difficult turns: rocker, counter, bracket, choctaw, outside mohawk and twizzle. So to get level 2 you need to execute cleanly AT least three of them. To get level 4, for example, you need to cleanly perform 5 types (including double twizzle).
According to ISU rules difficult turn is called 'clean' when:
1) entry and exit edges are correct (there should be a visible tracing of the curves);
2) the turn is not jumped or scratched.
If the turn is flat, jumped or scratched, the panel count it as simple turn. And very important: the depth and quality of edges is NOT RELEVANT to give credit to a difficult turn. It is assessed by judges in the GOE only.

So, let's see how many clean difficult turns each of them executed:

Maia: she intended to do BRACKET-CHOCTAW-COUNTER-TWIZZLE-ROCKER.
Bracket - was ok, not very deep but clean.
Choctaw - it was not a clean turn. If you will watch it in slow motion (I used 0.25x speed) you will see that she starts it with very deep inside edge but right before the change of foot her blade is going flat (at 4:16, they skate on fat blue line), then she puts her free foot on the ice on clear outside edge. The camera agle is not very good, unfortunately, to say for sure, because in the moment of the step Alex comes in front of her and we can't see her feet. But right before he hides her you can see that the edge is flat. Tech panel can see replays from different cameras, so they've seen it for sure.
Counter - in slow motion again you can see that she uses the toe of her free foot during the turn. So not clean too.
Twizzle - they do twizzle of two and half rotation. Clean.
Rocker - not clean. Again the same mistake: the edge is deep at first, but then it goes flat before the turn, the exit is not clean too. More than that, she jumped in the moment of turn (in slow motion you can see it at arounf 4:30).
The rest of the turns and movements are just a transitions, no more difficult turns attempted.

Alex: he tried to do BRACKET-ROCKER-COUNTER-TWIZZLE-CHOCTAW.
Bracket - clean, better than Maia.
Rocker - it's hard to say, but it seems like he helped himself with free foot too (like Maia did with her Counter). He did Rocker when Maia did her Choctaw, so you can wtch it yourself maybe I'm seeing things (but you need to watch in slow motion of course). Other than that the turn seems clean, the exit edge is very light but visible. So let's call the turn questionable.
Counter - seems like the flatest turn of the whole sequence. Not clean.
Twizzle - ok. Clean.
Choctaw - questionable again. The exit edge was scrapped, the quality of the video is not good, so I can't say for 100% sure. You can see it yourself (at 4:31).

So what we have in total:
Maia - 2 clean types of difficult turns (Bracket and Twizzle) + questionable Choctaw.
Alex - 2 clean types of difficult turns (Bracket and Twizzle) + questionable Rocker + questionable Choctaw.

So even if panel counted one of the steps I called 'questionable', or both questionable steps in case of Alex, the Step Sequence should still be level 1. And only if all questionable steps would be counted, then Step Sequence would be level 2 at max. Don't forget, the panel have replays from different angles.

Holds: they had Killian - Waltz - Killian - Waltz - Killian - Foxtrot. In total 3 types of holds with 4 changes of holds. Enough for level 4 style B step sequence. And it absolutely DOESN'T matter for the level of an element how close their holds are, because the 'closeness' should only be assessed by judges IN GOE AND PCS mark (Performance/execution).

So, I think level 1 call for their DiSt in this case is correct. But the main reason of that is poor quality of their steps, not the lack of holds or quality of their holds. The poor quality can be explained by tiredness (start of the season, end of the dance), or by lost focus, ot by the combination of both.
The more forgiving technical panel would probably call it level 2, but higher level for this sequence is impossible.

However, with clean steps both Maia and Alex would have 5 difficult turns each, and the requirements for level 4 will be met.

The video I used is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHaPQin4vwY

P.S. I usually don't do this kind of analysis because it takes too much time, and they are kinda subjective at times. So if anyone disagree with me on some points, please do tell!
Click to expand...
 
A nicely written article on Maia and Alex on Icenetwork.
http://web.icenetwork.com/news/2015/10/28/155779440


- They were inspired by friendships they made during Denis' Ten's tour including Stephane Lambiel, Tatiana Volosozhar and Max Trankov.

There is an impressively well-crafted video from this tour on their Shibsibs Youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2KGR8Ra2_4

- For their Coppelia short dance, they worked closely with Cheryl Yeager, principal dancer with American Ballet Theater. Quotes from her in the article highlighting their effort at authenticity.
- Their Coldplay free dance is "emotional and personal" for them.

- They are taking time away from college, and skating is their top priority.
Alex: "We're all in on our efforts to become the very best we can be"
 
Mrs. P said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLH84qdQk2I#t=18m01s
Skate Canada SD practice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZAcn6NnSqg
Skate Canada FD practice.

They totally reworked the dance! New music cut (an instrumental version of Coldplay's "The Scientist") and reworked choreographic elements. It looks much better.

Also letting Maia's hair down was a good move. :love:

Go Shibs, rock the SD tomorrow! :cheer:
Click to expand...

Thanks for finding and posting! They do look good though to be honest I am not crazy about her free dance dress- did she used to have a different one or am I mistaken?
 
tulosai said:
Thanks for finding and posting! They do look good though to be honest I am not crazy about her free dance dress- did she used to have a different one or am I mistaken?
Click to expand...

It looks like the same one to me...I think there's an ombré that is more visible though.
 
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