Looking back to look ahead

My favorite thing after spending part of this week looking at a few of the new programs unveiled in this (nearly) past summer’s competitions:



Predictable favorite, but I can't yet get excited about, say, ice dance until Papadakis Cizeron show us their new stuff. It's sure to be a revelation of general flowy-ness, blowy hair, wavy arms, honey-toned highlights and pretty tans. Can't really assess the potential in the 2015-2016 dance scene until those two show us where the bar is.

Many fans are excited about Ilushechkina/Moscovitch's Led Zeppelin short, but this Rachmaninoff long program has what I like best at the highest level of pairs skating (skating-wise, not placement-wise). The visceral thrill parts, a rolling wave of music and movement that sweeps the audience along until climaxing with the huge triple throw - in this program, it happens on a musically rumbling, low thundering downbeat.* (Blogger won't let me upload any version of the video clip illustration I made. The peak moment I'm talking about starts, in the above video, at 2:26 - 2:52 )

There is also this:



Kill me now.

Meagan and Erik, taking the skating out of pairs skating one quad throw at a time. They’re unabashedly crawling and cautious here, and no matter what the rest of the program looks like, it'll still be slow mo for these two tricks. They stalk that second quad for how long, killing how many seconds? He's doing more throwing her up (as it were) than across. Yet the likelihood is they repeat as World Champs.

Although they need bigger tricks to compete at the highest level, let me not overlook another Canadian pairs team:

Gilles and Poirier

Won’t embed Moore Towers Marinaro, but after writing her off as a Jessica Dube throwback last season, I respect the decision to switch training centers, and, for God’s sake, to get new choreography for all our sakes. With the candor that can make Kirsten Moore Towers endearing, she noted that last season she and Marinaro did end up looking like they cut out Dylan and slotted in Mike. Not that she put it just like that, but they sure didn’t cut out Margaret Purdy and slot in Kirsten. It was Marinaro subbing for Dylan, except for the part where Marinaro was bad. The biggest issue with the partner switch is still her partner – no quick fix for that. How many coaches have made world podium skaters out of journeymen skaters? As a skater, Kirsten isn't a team leader. As a competitor, okay, but from what I’ve seen, she needs a partner better than she is to up her game, and when she doesn’t have one, things get very sloppy. OTOH, I think her new coaches are tougher about the skating than the Wirtzes, who didn’t mind lots of rough edges.

Won’t embed Seguin Bilodeau either. Plenty of fans seem to love their new programs, to me these programs appear to highlight an absence of power and speed. Both are strong skaters with nice edges and soft knees (and more), and that, combined with how they’re built, keeps making me expect more power out of their stroking. Good and consistent as they are, at the moment it's like watching them  skate underwater.

On the sham end of things, I did some scrolling around instagrams, although no digging around instagrams, or other corners of the web, which is where the more buzzworthy stuff is usually found or talked about, so I'll just comment on this and other images like this:

They should have done this all along, where Mommy’s there to make everything kosher. Or maybe gone all 21st century and pretended Tessa is gay. I wonder, though, if down the line anyone might feel a little queasy, wondering how come mommy’s right there with daddy now, bff-ing it up when the woman playing the part is an athletic pal-next-door type "girlfriend", but mommy was a no show, social media wise**, when daddy was trekking around the Internet with a couple of brazen TMI hussies (you know what I mean).***That’s how rumors get started.****

Dance - Paul Islam, new SD, made in Montreal:

I guess after last year everybody got the message. Not that you could have possibly missed it.

I wish I could get a clearer sense of the ice coverage here.

I wonder if Weaver & Poje feel abandoned at the DSC. Hell, I wonder if this coming season Krylova feels abandoned by the ISU. She certainly gave her all to forestall it, what with calling Tessa fat, dissing Virtue and Moir's skating and generally disgracing herself in a disgusting sellout of an episode that was maybe driven by panic. Let’s see how futile her efforts were – or not.

Finally, Hubbell and Donohue:

Maybe I'm not the only one who went here when I saw H&D's costumes:

On the left that's Natalia Mischkutenok and Arthur Dmitriev
at the 1994 European Championships. They would come in second
to Gordeeva and Grinkov in Lillehammer, and I've seen both skates
a billion times.

______________
*It happens in dance, too, most recently in Virtue Moir's Carmen when the audience waited for the moment the lyrical section hushed, and the low roll of the drums began.
**Except for when Tessa pitched in when Moirville was giving Jessica the "Thanks -- bye" tour in 2012.

***Are Scott and Kaitlyn doing any sleep skyping at all?
****Jessica and Cassandra each are taking the longest break ever from the relationship scene. Jessica hasn't been with a guy since Scott, and Cassandra better be practicing her knitting for when she's the only Hilborn kid home for the holidays because everybody else has spouses and kids and rotates Thanksgiving, Christmas, Canada Day and birthdays with the in-laws. She'll still not have found another "the one" after Scott Moir. He really makes an imprint.

Scott's 28 this week. I wonder if Tessa will say happy birthday on twitter!