- Joined
- Mar 29, 2014
Tara
As Polina circled the ice before her free skate, it seemed that the evening had become a paler shade of white. The milky ice, the white walls of the rink, the blazing lights above: it was as though the pressure of the occasion had parsed everything of color. Even her face was so, so pale. With her abstracted gaze, one couldn’t help but wonder whether she, too, felt that pressure. The precision required by figure skating is so easily affected that many skaters are unable do their best under such circumstances. Would the same be true for her, now that she was so close to so much that she wanted?
No one outside her own circle expected her to do well at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in St. Paul. In this forum, most thought that she would place fourth or fifth, and many more believed that she would come in sixth or worse than that she would come in even third. She was superb in the short program, though, her skate to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” a shimmering dream, pristine when so many others were badly flawed. She came away from it in first place, the only question being why her margin wasn’t ever greater.
It was wonderful to go into the long program with a lead, but there was a price for this in the awful pressure that came with it. The eyes of the judges would be upon her, also the expectations of the audience. For her competitors, whatever she did, for good or bad, would be a marker for their own efforts. No jump or spin could be recalled when she left the ice, no mistake corrected. It would seem that the arms of the world were waiting to receive her, but only if she skated well. If she faltered, there would be no arms to hold her—none that she could feel, that is—and the world would be a cold and forbidding place, because she had been so close.
She moistened lips suddenly dry and assumed her opening pose at center ice. Her dark blonde hair hung in thick curls, appropriate for the young antebellum woman she was portraying, but a startling departure from how other skaters were coiffed. Her much criticized dress was not the dramatic red that so many had called for, but as it had been, with the white and green of innocence and hope. The music began, she entered into her character, and her opening jump combination was a magnificent riposte to all thought of pressure or the possibility of failure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLmxFHpoRUg
Polina’s program, to music taken from “Gone With the Wind,” had also been heavily criticized and unfavorably compared to that of another skater based on music from the same source. That piece was more of a dramatic impression, very good in its own way but very different from Polina’s, which was like that of a ballet which tells a story. She might skate to “Giselle” one day, but here she was skating to “Scarlett.”
Since every story has a beginning, hers was the same as that of the motion picture, with a Scarlett scarcely older than herself at the gathering at Twelve Oaks. The opening sequence was to a quiet and contemplative version of the “Tara” theme, which conveyed a sense of memory and loss. Here was the essential context for her program. With a curtsey or bow, she suggested the courtliness of a “land of cavaliers and cotton fields,” and with that stunning triple lutz-triple toe combination which opened the piece, the grandeur of a “civilization gone with the wind.” Her arms crossed before her, as though to hold on to what was now gone, save for what was remembered.
From this reverie she was seemingly startled, back at the gathering and realizing for the first time how beautiful and desirable a woman she had become. It was such a delightful surprise. She waved to some admirers, blew a kiss to the others, and then delivered an exultant triple flip-half loop-triple salchow combination as she began the steps of a dance in which she was the center of attention. Suddenly the war which had shadowed the land all along broke out in its fury. Her spins and twirls suggested someone caught in a maelstrom. She could not stop it, nor can anyone one, and it crushes and imperils all that is dear to her in its relentlessness.
In the midst of this devastation, however, she realized at last her own truest love. It was not for any person, but for the land itself, for Tara. As the music swelled in a majestic restatement of the “Tara” theme, she swept across the ice in a grand spiral, the marvelous line of her body accentuated by an arm thrust out to reveal the strength of purpose she had found. A brilliant combination of pirouettes and a leap culminated in a gesture of farewell to all that was, but a final fierce pose of defiance. As God was her witness, neither she nor anyone she loved would ever go hungry again.
The waves of applause cascading upon the ice should have washed away any doubt as to the worthiness of the program or her performance of it. She seemed aware that something very special had happened, but for a moment she seemed lost in her contemplation of it. At last she assumed her position at center ice, put a hand to her heart and looked up at the audience with glistening eyes.
Polina had wanted to give expression to music through the dance, and to the dance through figure skating. She wanted to realize something greater than herself. How well the time and place had been met in St. Paul, how well the purpose fulfilled. The difference that evening from other evenings was the way in which she invested the story and character with herself. She had given all to her art, she had held nothing back. It mattered little that later on another skater would receive a higher score. No doubt it was deserved, but the quality of a skate has a spiritual aspect which may not always find a tangible reward. Whether it lives on has more to do with the heart and its reasons than with something put away in a box. The people there will not have been made to forget Vivian Leigh, but then, they were not meant to. What they will remember is the Scarlett O’Hara of Polina Edmunds, when she approached greatness and did not falter.
As Polina circled the ice before her free skate, it seemed that the evening had become a paler shade of white. The milky ice, the white walls of the rink, the blazing lights above: it was as though the pressure of the occasion had parsed everything of color. Even her face was so, so pale. With her abstracted gaze, one couldn’t help but wonder whether she, too, felt that pressure. The precision required by figure skating is so easily affected that many skaters are unable do their best under such circumstances. Would the same be true for her, now that she was so close to so much that she wanted?
No one outside her own circle expected her to do well at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in St. Paul. In this forum, most thought that she would place fourth or fifth, and many more believed that she would come in sixth or worse than that she would come in even third. She was superb in the short program, though, her skate to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” a shimmering dream, pristine when so many others were badly flawed. She came away from it in first place, the only question being why her margin wasn’t ever greater.
It was wonderful to go into the long program with a lead, but there was a price for this in the awful pressure that came with it. The eyes of the judges would be upon her, also the expectations of the audience. For her competitors, whatever she did, for good or bad, would be a marker for their own efforts. No jump or spin could be recalled when she left the ice, no mistake corrected. It would seem that the arms of the world were waiting to receive her, but only if she skated well. If she faltered, there would be no arms to hold her—none that she could feel, that is—and the world would be a cold and forbidding place, because she had been so close.
She moistened lips suddenly dry and assumed her opening pose at center ice. Her dark blonde hair hung in thick curls, appropriate for the young antebellum woman she was portraying, but a startling departure from how other skaters were coiffed. Her much criticized dress was not the dramatic red that so many had called for, but as it had been, with the white and green of innocence and hope. The music began, she entered into her character, and her opening jump combination was a magnificent riposte to all thought of pressure or the possibility of failure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLmxFHpoRUg
Polina’s program, to music taken from “Gone With the Wind,” had also been heavily criticized and unfavorably compared to that of another skater based on music from the same source. That piece was more of a dramatic impression, very good in its own way but very different from Polina’s, which was like that of a ballet which tells a story. She might skate to “Giselle” one day, but here she was skating to “Scarlett.”
Since every story has a beginning, hers was the same as that of the motion picture, with a Scarlett scarcely older than herself at the gathering at Twelve Oaks. The opening sequence was to a quiet and contemplative version of the “Tara” theme, which conveyed a sense of memory and loss. Here was the essential context for her program. With a curtsey or bow, she suggested the courtliness of a “land of cavaliers and cotton fields,” and with that stunning triple lutz-triple toe combination which opened the piece, the grandeur of a “civilization gone with the wind.” Her arms crossed before her, as though to hold on to what was now gone, save for what was remembered.
From this reverie she was seemingly startled, back at the gathering and realizing for the first time how beautiful and desirable a woman she had become. It was such a delightful surprise. She waved to some admirers, blew a kiss to the others, and then delivered an exultant triple flip-half loop-triple salchow combination as she began the steps of a dance in which she was the center of attention. Suddenly the war which had shadowed the land all along broke out in its fury. Her spins and twirls suggested someone caught in a maelstrom. She could not stop it, nor can anyone one, and it crushes and imperils all that is dear to her in its relentlessness.
In the midst of this devastation, however, she realized at last her own truest love. It was not for any person, but for the land itself, for Tara. As the music swelled in a majestic restatement of the “Tara” theme, she swept across the ice in a grand spiral, the marvelous line of her body accentuated by an arm thrust out to reveal the strength of purpose she had found. A brilliant combination of pirouettes and a leap culminated in a gesture of farewell to all that was, but a final fierce pose of defiance. As God was her witness, neither she nor anyone she loved would ever go hungry again.
The waves of applause cascading upon the ice should have washed away any doubt as to the worthiness of the program or her performance of it. She seemed aware that something very special had happened, but for a moment she seemed lost in her contemplation of it. At last she assumed her position at center ice, put a hand to her heart and looked up at the audience with glistening eyes.
Polina had wanted to give expression to music through the dance, and to the dance through figure skating. She wanted to realize something greater than herself. How well the time and place had been met in St. Paul, how well the purpose fulfilled. The difference that evening from other evenings was the way in which she invested the story and character with herself. She had given all to her art, she had held nothing back. It mattered little that later on another skater would receive a higher score. No doubt it was deserved, but the quality of a skate has a spiritual aspect which may not always find a tangible reward. Whether it lives on has more to do with the heart and its reasons than with something put away in a box. The people there will not have been made to forget Vivian Leigh, but then, they were not meant to. What they will remember is the Scarlett O’Hara of Polina Edmunds, when she approached greatness and did not falter.
Last edited:
:hap93:
:sad21:
