Well I am back from the Detroit show with a few impressions! Hopefully I won't forget anything.
My favourites of the night were Shizuka and oddly enough, Victor. Shiz treated us to her awesome Ina Bauer no less than three times over the course of the evening. I had never seen Victor skate before. Ever. I have just read about him. He did a kind of cowboy number complete with hat and vest, and he reminded me very much of Kurt Browning. That is a big compliment!
Ryan Bradley. - meh.
Tanith and Ben were good. I am not normally a big fan but it was great to see them just having fun out there. Tanith is cute, but boy is she thin.
To echo a previous poster, Plushenko was just plain bizarre. Just like at the Olympics, he skated to a slower song but decided to flap his way around the rink like a maniac. I just don't understand him. I almost feel stupid watching him because he is obviously getting something from the music that I just don't "get". It didn't help that he also popped both of what were probably meant to be triple axels.
Surya was her usual energetic self. I could watch her do her back flip (landed on one foot of course!) all day long. She wore her usual flamboyant dresses as well. No surprises here.
Kimmie was ok. A bit boring IMO but I still admire her. From what I remember her arms looked better in the first outfit she wore because the frilly things trailing off of it helped "disguise" the problem.
Pang and Tong were nice to see, but they weren't at their best. Their twist was nice and airy, but she couldn't hold the landing on one of their throws and plunked down pretty hard.
For her first act Irina Grigorian did a bizarre catwoman thing on what looked to be a giant hamster wheel. Weird. Her second act was better. I am impressed by anyone that can skate and work about 20 hula hoops. Then again I have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time so maybe I am easy to impress
Sasha is one of my favourites and although she missed one of her jumps she was great to watch. I actually managed to get a good picture of her doing her Charlotte. If I wasn't a technical ignoramus I could post it here.
Although not a fan, I enjoyed Evan. He skated to INXS which was good, and he seemed to be one of the very few skaters who was actually "on".
Johnny was good to watch. Oh so smooth. I must admit that I really wasn't into the number he did with Melissa and Denis. Too strange for me I guess? Not sure.
Rudy was fun to watch. He gave his usual performance and the young girl sitting behind me just about pierced my eardrums with her scream!
Could have done without the silly Dan Hollander superhero routine. Maybe it's just me.
Polishchuk and Besedin were great to watch but I am used to seeing a longer routine out of them. I guess when you have to fit in a lot of skaters you have to keep it short.
Shae Lynn was good but I have seen this routine a few times before so I wasn't as impressed as the first time around. Still interesting though.
Final observations:
From what I could tell, Joe Louis Arena was probably about one third full meaning there was around 7000 in attendance. Besides the girl behind me the crowd was pretty quiet. I don't know what the show is lacking but it needs to amp up the excitement level a little bit. This was only the second show I have seen without Kurt Browning and I really missed his presence! I have seen a Marshall's cheesefest (also in Detroit), CSOI as well as Canadian Celebration On Ice about 5 times each, as well as a few of Kurt's Gotta Skate's as well. Unfortunately I would have to rank this COI near the bottom of the pile. I found the quality of skating to be on the low side (yes I understand it's an exhibition), and the show to be poorly paced (pretty backloaded) My girlfriend liked it slightly more than I did but generally agreed with my assessment. I'm not sure we would make the 4 hour trip again the way it stands.
