Virtue and Moir STILL haven't retired. I'm wondering if they are waiting and seeing if Cizeron's back issues cut short the Papadakis & Cizeron juggernaut. Let's put "back problems" in quotes. Don't wish ill on his back, but if a pretext could be found for pre-Olympic retirement, that would do the sport good. Seriously, THESE are going to be seven time consecutive world champions when all is said and done? That's just absolutely stupid. Nobody's buying it, and it has been driving teams out of the sport. Lie in wait, Scott and Tessa!
They could also be doing their favorite thing - keeping the guesswork up for publicity and content.
I love this on Tessa.
OT: I recently went down the rabbit hole of a body/style classification system called "Kibbe types". It sorts women's optimum clothing style according to the balance (or imbalance) of yin/yang in their body lines, including their facial features and bone structure. Yin being feminine, yang being masculine, but remembering some traits defined as yang are traits many women want (long legs, for example).
If a woman is wearing the 'wrong" lines for her body type, she is still a beautiful woman, but she will look most herself in stuff that matches her lines. I have Tessa pegged as a "soft classic," which means I don't think she looks her best in all the edgy, detailed, geometric, on trend stuff she has often liked to wear, as that stuff is better suited to gamine (for example, her sister Jordan). Ditto for the Audrey Hepburn-esque black leggings/flats thing she used to favor. That's a gamine. It looks juvenile / contrived on the wrong type.
So she looks great here. Stay there, Tessa. It's the difference between "Tessa is styling" (I just can't make myself drop the "g".) and "Tessa is gorgeous."
I can't believe she's not even thirty yet.
I'm focused on the dress because the more-platonic-than-thou remarks seeded throughout the accompanying Walk of Fame articles is instant sleep-spiration, to hijack one of social media's most obnoxious portmanteau trends.
Every once in awhile, something comes along:
I love quotes like this one:
My failures from the past seasons really motivated me to do well," Kihira said through a translator. "I promised myself that I would remember them and never repeat those mistakes again.
Not that the positivity and bright-side-ing of North American sports culture doesn't have its place, but I like when athletes, particularly very young athletes, dispense with subtext.
Nicely done for the elements, feels a little content-lite:
Which is the direction the ISU has been pushing ice dance for years. Just creep on back to the late 1990s. I haven't deconstructed Hubbell and Donohue's elements and in betweens, but my immediate impression is it's pretty cursory. Lots of swinging around for transitions.
They have a lovely, powerful glide, although in the first half Madison's upper body movements call to mind John Mueller's critique of Cyd Charisse's dancing - that she "slams into position." She really slings those shoulders around, and although they won, and stipulating it might not matter, maybe nothing should compete in the power and flow of the glide.
Friday, November 30, 2018
One of the worst parts about following ice dance lately is having to actually watch it.
Is it that Gabriella can't be fussed about the free leg on the exit or she just forgot?
The fact that Papadakis & Cizeron are serenely untroubled by program mistakes doesn't mean the judges should be, but talk about screaming into a void.
Their characteristic "can't be fussed about this unison stuff" also happened in the free.
Remember this crisis?
It is clear that figure skating looked at the emergence of Virtue and Moir in the early-mid-0s as a looming issue. Two very young ice dancers, spectacularly talented, versatile, musical, wonderfully charming and good looking, passionate, and, most of all, unambivalent about each other, skating and competition. They were built to last. If things had been allowed to proceed without interference, they would be the winners of four Olympic gold medals - Vancouver, Sochi, Pyeongchang and, coming up in 2022, Beijing. Nobody came along in that time who could challenge them, and even ten years ago skating knew the odds of a team with the goods to challenge them coming along the pipeline were slim. There is still no team to challenge them.
This could not stand.
So the sport did two things – pretended another team had accomplished stuff on the ice that had not been accomplished (key points, steps executed correctly, stable, synchronized elements, speed, unison, edges, skating) and scored accordingly, while dumbing down the requirements to eliminate any advantage Virtue and Moir gained from their ability to achieve extraordinary skating feats on the ice. A third component was propaganda, easily accomplished in an enterprise where even the journalists who cover it know little about what they're covering and continue to be incapable of distinguishing performance (i.e., apparent energy, "flair", charm, theatrics, emoting, personality) from content.
We got gold medalists in Sochi who held hands at arms’ length throughout their program interspersed with piggy back rides and dragging, and we currently have dominant world champions who skate two footed, flat bladed and frequently out of sync but look so floaty when they do it. This pacifies the mediocre skaters whose whining begins to sound as if having a lot of talent and being really good at something is an unfair advantage, unfairly awarded. Shouldn’t working super hard to overcome or packaging yourself around a handful of inherent deficiencies get more points?
Has two of my favorite quotes. One is a question from the 'journalist'. "Usually tango can be quite stiff and formal. Yours is completely fluid. How do you make passion so fluid."
How did you make the tango the exact opposite of its requisite sharp, staccato characteristics so it is performed like every other program you've ever skated?
And from Papadakis: "Four years ago, we didn't start with an Olympic medal hope. Then we realized it was possible."
What was their first clue? Even they are saying they knew they weren't skating to an Olympic level but suddenly were getting scored as if they were.
If you took a snapshot mid-twizzle rotation of any pair of ice dancers more often than not there will be moments out of sync, and then they catch up by the exit, but these two. What did this sort of execution win in Pyeongchang? World record? Explosive GOEs?
***
I’ve get a wry enjoyment out of Gilles and Poirier, still doing their thing all these years after Poirier controversially jettisoned Vanessa Crone, still essentially occupying the same spot, still cheesy. If Poirier had known he'd be treading water in 2019 with the same goal just about the same distance away he might have jumped off a building.
I don't know these people, but it's a bunch of
biathletes dressed up as figure skaters for Halloween.
Now that ice dancing has been cleared of many high level competitors, Hubbell & Donohoe have easily qualified for the Grand Prix final, where they will be defeated by Papadakis & Cizeron, who have yet to make their Grand Prix debut.
I still hold a grudge against Madison Hubbell from last year, where she employed her outspoken personality to perpetuate the kind of narrative bullshit that we can't get enough of in ice dance. To refresh:
Tessa and Scott are kind of that — for me, at least, they’re the quintessential Old Hollywood team. Like, they just…no matter what music you give them or what choreography, they find their place inside of it. I think that they knew their strengths and they knew their weaknesses and seeing them train, they don’t compare themselves, so it lets them be 100% committed to whatever it is they choose to do. And that’s where you see, for me… You know, they get the tens and they get all the +3s. And we see them compete, you know — they’ve had a lot of little bobbles, little mistakes this season in their performances. They don’t always skate perfect, but they make you believe that it’s perfect because they’re so committed to each other, to their performance, and they just get lost in their own little world.
Oh fuck you again, Hubbell.
The sour grapes in figure skating are enough to choke on. Dear God the resentment when somebody or a couple of somebodies are extraordinary AND consistently win. Hell, the resentment persists even when the best skaters with the best skate of the competition are blatantly prevented from winning. Can we please not get some gold hardware and serious respect for the amazing stuff thrown down by the lesser skaters and teams over here instead? Let's have some fairness!
I went looking for Hubbell's quote before starting this post and found it on a webpage -JudgingPrivilege wordpress - I hadn't read before. It reads like something a regular participant or two on this blog may have created. Here's Hubbell re Gabby and Guillaume:
For Gabriella and Guillaume, I think that they’ve always had, even when they were younger and less successful, they had a power, a glide and, you know, sometimes in practice… We actually trained for a little while with them in Detroit when they came, visited Pasquale [Camerlengo] in our first season together [2011-12], and they were a team that were a little bit of a mess, made a lot of mistakes, but those moments that they were really skating together, you could tell they had just this special chemistry, a glide…
Like, for me they are the kind of skating that I want to see in ice dance. It’s power but it’s also elegant. Their lines are just gorgeous and they’ve put a lot of work in the last four years of being here in Montreal on the precision and what it takes to not lose points and not make mistakes, and that’s really the only thing they needed to become the powerhouse that they are, because naturally they have just such beautiful lines. They’re artists in the way that they represent music and feeling and so I think that’s their quality.
I was going to call up some images of P&C's magnificent lines* but how often can you do that? It doesn't matter.
The Judging Privilege blog calls her out.
Excerpts:
When the quotes were condensed and tweeted by Figure Skaters Online, they got to the heart of the matter: Hubbell holds up Papadakis and Cizeron as a sort of Platonic ideal of ice dance, while Virtue and Moir make mistakes, but let you forget about them.
It is also a curious juxtaposition to create — Papadakis and Cizeron as a team who have ceased to make mistakes, Virtue and Moir as a team who do — when the French have logged disruptive falls at two of this season’s events.
Hubbell also stressed on the same call that they are keenly aware that none of the three top U.S. teams have any real edge over the other, nor can they overlook the threats of many other international teams ranked on par. But something has made them feel similar caution is not in order where Virtue and Moir are concerned.
Judging Privilege surmises this something was Hubbell & Donohue's cozy relationship with notably non-partisan US Judge Sharon Rogers and her frequent scoring of Virtue and Moir as on par with Hubbell & Donohoe.
So in these quotes from last season, Maddie is not being candid. She's politicking.
She will be much happier always coming in second to Papadakis & Cizeron than third behind Virtue & Moir and Papadakis & Cizeron. She can't possibly kid herself that they have a shot no matter how the skating goes down. They're already better than Papadakis & Cizeron and yet must pretend Papadakis & Cizeron's abilities are something to which they can only aspire.
Here's Hubbell & Donohue's free dance at Skate Canada. I don't think it represents their best. I thought there were a lot of little bobbles, as it were, too much sliding and scampering, and many small slips and moments out of sync. And they seemed somewhat gassed in the back half of the program.
I think Hubbell's attitude also resides in the Montreal situation. I suspect and continue to suspect that while H&D and P&C were actually coached by and part of the supposedly close-knit crew at Gadbois, Virtue and Moir were pretending for public consumption only - something with which Virtue and Moir are thoroughly experienced. I suspect Virtue and Moir had their own coaching, own training ice somewhere else, their own choreography, and behaved as if they needed resources far beyond what was available at Gadbois - and indeed they did need resources far beyond what was available at Gadbois and they got them. As skaters they are far beyond Gadbois and everybody there.
I suspect that what Virtue & Moir did was considered elitism, which I've come to understand is a big no no in elite sports like ice dance. As is truly elite level performance. Be truly elite, you will piss people off.
*sarcasm.
Sunday, September 30, 2018
GOE changes.
If a judge or team of judges is going to give a mediocre (or even poorly executed or barely executed) move a +3, there will be no problem awarding the same move by the same skater(s) a +5. As everyone has already remarked. It's cosmetic b.s. that won't affect the rankings.
Alina Zagitova.
I enjoyed this. I think only Russia can produce figure skaters who win the Olympics but come back with the drive of a runner up. She's not skating as if she won, she's skating as if she pep talked herself all summer and this time, damn it, she can do it. She's got more power and speed. War horse music and then some in both programs, but Carmen is fantastic figure skating music, and the music is supposed to support the skater, not vice versa. Phantom of the Opera I'm meh about but in a women's short with lots of cuts, it's fine.
Ok.
I've read all the comments over the past couple of years that report what is really going on here (above, and by here, I mean Zachary Donohue and Madison Hubbell), but I have no first hand information. If the comments are correct, then I just can't.
I saw this when it was first published, obviously, but who took the picture or was Meryl's right hand holding a selfie stick?
IMO (and obviously this is not a unique position) just about everything has devolved into the lowest common denominator of self-promotion.
Fedor. Red carpet appearance. His lovely bride to be is out of frame to his right. No point in showing her because it's the same facial expression she has worn 99.7% of the time she has been in front of a camera lens. She is one of the mysteries of my time.
I think this year Hubbell & Donohoe will win most of the silver medals in competitions shared with Papadakis and Cizeron and the rest of it will be P&C's uninterrupted march toward 2022 gold. Of all the ice dancers in ice dance history, this is the one the ice dance decided should be as unchallenged as Grishok Platov in their day, while ice dancers with actual talent, Virtue and Moir, were treated as disruptive and a problem. It's because of this we have the Shibs and W&P sitting things out. There is no point. The Shibs have already won all the silvers.
It's never going to happen. There will always be something to promote. They're going to be on the public stage the rest of their lives, and at that point what with all the doubling down and raising the ante, they'll consider the price of coming clean too overwhelming and, as with most people who double down on something wrong or are on the losing end of a sunk cost fallacy, they'll become more convinced the initial lie was right. Maybe if we have WW III they'll decide it's ok but I'd bet that they wouldn't want to distract from world events.
About lies, I've been watching a bunch of youtube on how to spot a liar (it's a super popular topic these days along with analyzing narcissism). The body language info that was most interesting made the point that stress is much easier to spot than deception, and if you see signs of stress when someone is speaking, that can be a tell. Well, actually, you will see signs of controlling stress. Self-touching, exhalation, lip biting, rubbing one's arms or legs. And blocking - arm crossing, eyes averting. Virtue and Moir, when really lying, between the fixed eye contact and faint smiles (Tessa), and the strenuous self-pacifying we see from Scott, were almost a parody of lying tells. I used to wonder if they were trolling on that basis alone ("We're pretending to be terrible liars.")
Dr. Phil comes along, however, and is not a huge fan of body language tells. He believes there is one major thing that will tip you off - someone telling you shit you never asked. Too much detail. Going on and on. Explaining why and how what you say is true.
On that basis:
Tessa and Scott. The W Network Case closed.*
*I read a 1930s movie star's autobiography. Towards the very end, she goes on for paragraphs explaining to us why she and her long time leading man and close friend never slept together. They loved each other dearly, she explained. From time to time he'd have a crush on her or she'd have a crush on him and the other one would keep it in check. Why is it so hard for people to understand that the closest, most intimate, most beloved friends who sync together effortlessly can have the tenderest feelings of love but not do the deed? This was a duo where nobody (in the show biz media or show biz history, or among fans) has ever insinuated they DID sleep together, but she throws this in. It raised a whole bunch of flags to me but I didn't know why. Now after hearing Dr. Phil, I know what it is.
Tessa Virtue has been fat twice in her competitive career. The first time in Sochi:
She was called fat by numerous bystanders in figure skating, coaches of competitors, etc., all of whom are going to burn in hell for it. I wonder what ALL of them got out of parroting the party line. Their teams didn't get dumped? Their teams got a boost? What?
After Sochi, she wasn't fat anymore. Then as soon as Virtue and Moir returned to figure skating, she was immediately fat again when VM began competing against Papadakis & Cizeron.
Fat. Not really fat for a PERSON, but for a skater, come on.
You want to look like this:
The ideal skater and dancer bodies. As ever, words cannot describe.
Maria Tallchief. Once married to George Balanchine, which is odd because he was the main guy who influenced the ballerina wraith, launching a generation of eating disorders, drug abuse and nicotine diets. His era of influence waning, body-type wise.
Darci Kistler in her prime. If she had only been a wraith, perhaps she'd have been more successful.
Ashley Bouder, principal dancer with the New York City Ballet. She's fun. Look her up.
Julie Kent. Principal dancer with
the American Ballet theatre 1993-2015.
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
***
When I started this blog somewhere around early 2011 (I'll look at the archives later) fake news (a/k/a "propaganda") wasn't widely perceived to have been mainstreamed. Virtue and Moir's lies about their relationship was a seemingly home brewed enterprise that seemed equal parts "protect the privacy of the kids" and "give the hometown friends and family (and the spotlight hungry at Skate Canada, and the complicit media) something to make them feel involved and important." It was marked by an unnecessary malice and poor sportsmanship, tackiness and contempt that stood in unpleasant relief vis a vis the Moir & Co. incessant bragging about core Canadian values. It didn't have the most professional sheen. Many people outside any sort of fandom could see pretty easily what was going on. For those that knew what was going on for other reasons, it was like a two way mirror where you could see and hear people talking shit about you behind your back. "Oh, they can't hear us! We can mock them!"
When Virtue and Moir did their reality show, the blog noted that, apart from Virtue and Moir being ice dancers, "Tessa and Scott" stood alone in the universe of reality shows as complete fabrication. Not even the premise was true. I said the premise of other reality shows, from the Kardashian output to the various Bachelor iterations, were essentially real even if the format and plot developments were warped. I.e., - the Bachelor(ette) is an unmarried individual in a cast of other unmarried individuals. The Kardashians ARE a blended family. Etc.
I don't think that's the case anymore. Lots of things have joined the W Network's "Tessa and Scott" as a complete fake masquerading as a realish life narrative.
****
1. There was a lot of pushback when Forbes named Kyle Jenner a "self-made billionaire." This for a young woman fronting what is essentially a glorified license agreement. The pushback featured a word that's become nearly radioactive (not to me, but to some) - i.e., "privilege." I know just seeing it and some people stop reading.
Don't be delicate. Be vast and brilliant.
That's officially (for now) Tessa Virtue's favorite quote. It's innocuous as a mantra for an elite athlete (although some day I'd like her to explain how one becomes "vast", or is able to choose brilliance), but as words to live by, it's insipid and exclusionary.
I'm not fond of the "follow your passion" truism - it's not real. It avoids dealing with or even acknowledging the many inherited privileges that make that pursuit possible for very few at a young age, while, due to systemic realities, it's out of reach for most people due to the mundane need to, you know, survive.
And let me say that's quite a favorite quote from someone as chickenshit - and procrastinating - as Tessa (and Scott) when it comes to something that would require real, non-instagramable maturity, courage, conviction, and honesty - outside the bubble of her sport where they exist as exceptional. It would require humility. They prefer the marketable kind of courage and passion.
Most people can't follow their passion (there was lots of pushback on the Kyle cover but this from "ManRepeller.com" was my favorite. It makes no bones.)
2. Read the below on tumblr from a woman claiming to work in pr - it's something we already know, but it nutshells things so well:
Do you want to know who the pioneers of “Fake News” are? The PR firms and the PR teams. We CREATED “Fake News” to sell you the truth we want to depict. “Fake News” is both a PR generated concept and a result of dangerous PR games.
This tumblr vent went on to say that the goal of ALL pr - her agency's goal, every agency's goal, is to make people feel bad. I think Virtue and Moir succeeded with that one (remember "Hi, I'm up and at 'em early on instagram on Scott's birthday solely to make the point that you CAN'T MAKE ME wish him happy birthday on this platform."). She CAN feel him up on a nationally televised reality show though, as part of their 2014 Olympic prep - isn't that sort of thing the primary reason one hires expensive ice dance choreographic talent?
They have boundaries only when they're not getting paid to to violate them. If someone offered them big bucks to come clean, they'd lose their scruples, I promise.
Virtue and Moir were little amateur trailblazers in the fake news arena, but there was a tidal wave right behind them and they jumped aboard.
Both Scott and Tessa do a lot of "empowerment" signaling (I ripped that off from virtue signaling, and how I hate the word "empowerment) while sustaining a ten year history of gaslighting their fans, who are mostly women. It's exploitation at its most basic, and built upon the inherent inequality. Nobody can argue that Tessa and Scott didn't manipulate and lie above and beyond, a hundred times over than what was arguably necessary to "protect" whatever they claimed they were protecting.
They were aware of what was being said by fans, and fed it back, even when it contradicted earlier narratives. They didn't have the common respect to account for discrepancies - it was always out with the old that we previously insisted you to believe, in with the opposite. Fans were like a bug you poke under a magnifying glass.
They were often uber-controlling, overheated and intense about it, trying to crawl into fans' heads, which I've never understood. They always made fans wrong, even about the skating (fans loved Carmen, Virtue and Moir claimed they didn't),.
I never understood why they needed to humiliate fans so completely. It's still humiliation even if the victims are unaware. What was behind the overkill? Maybe their competitive spirit, which shows itself even in an unequal contest. Or maybe it's greed.
Their fans are mostly women of a demographic that is probably least valued in north American culture, and therefore least respected.
From time to time, Virtue and Moir will issue a straightforward and sincere statement, as they did when Denis Ten's murder was reported. They did the same when they supported the right of women in sport to be free of predators. But IMO, it's not possible to really have it both ways like that. Their sincerity is poisoned. You have integrity, or you don't.
*And of course, what about those who don't have a passion to follow? Is that ok?
Saturday, June 30, 2018
The butthurt on Cizeron Papadakis still makes me ragey. How totally unfair to have skating and dance in ice dance. Shouldn't the sport had thrown even more points at their errors while dinging VM for imaginary mistakes? The stress they went through all season knowing it wasn't going to be 100% a gift! Only 98.7 or so.
Back before their first Olympics, I wanted Virtue and Moir to have the same resume as G&G - they were in a similar universe of their own. When they weren't allowed to take home the gold in 2014, I equivocated with myself that G&G didn't compete in the 1992 Olympics, but rather the one after. Then VM won 2018, justice had snuck in through the back door, and I began seeing their resume as on par with G&G. I'm only talking resume, purely out of context.
There is actually an area where Virtue and Moir's resume stands above G&G's, and above not just skating teams, but all figure skaters who ever competed in more than one Olympics. Have any other Olympic figure skaters been perfect in every Olympics in which they competed? G&G's LP at Lillehammer had a number of small glitches (while their nearest competitors had made their own roughness a feature, not a bug, and G&G's technical purity was their feature, so of course, many fans considered the result unfair). The media is not really allowed to acknowledge that Virtue and Moir were perfect in Sochi, but they were. That is extraordinary. I don't think there are any other figure skaters as absolutely purpose-built for that level of competition. Scott sang through all of it. (It's not noted as much that Tessa sang with him in the Pyeongchang fd, but she did.)
It's heartbreaking in a way that the most extraordinary ice dancers in history competed at a time when being good at skating was actively discouraged by the sport, where it was considered problematic, where everything on earth was done to artificially level the playing field to the point of humiliation.
They’ll have other projects to announce soon, they said, and new collaborations to begin. The next act for Canada’s Tessa and Scott may look a lot different from what we’ve seen so far.
These bitches. No it won't. Even if they decide to lift the veil on their more compelling unseen collaborations, new is not the word for any of them.
I'm discussing this article out of order because I did like this part near the end:
Moir and Virtue are a little less eager to do their own choreography. They skated one of their pieces at Pyeongchang – a flowing, elegiac tribute to Gord Downie, set to The Tragically Hip’s Long Time Running. But “we tend to steal from ourselves,” Moir said; and when working alone, they miss the perspective of what Virtue calls “the outside eye.”
Good. Long Time Running was, to me, as meh as most of their show dances, and the Gord Downie backstory was no help.
The article's author, Robert Everett-Green, observes that ice dance inhibits dancing, because you can't "stop and dance."
No worries. Ice dance rules and criteria have worked hard to get us to where teams are mostly stopping and "dancing". Our current world champions, Papadakis & Cizeron, seem to feel that the skating part of what they do is a pretty unfair expectation of Olympic athletes as extraordinary as themselves. That's for show boaty, cheap ass vulgarian panderers like Virtue and Moir (right, Madison Hubbell?).
Ice dance rules and regulations have developed to where teams are incentived to ignore as much as possible the fact that the medium is ice. Ice dance has eaten its own tail at this point.
Tessa says:
The impetus for our movement as a pair should be quite similar to that of the ballroom world. But we have just that forward-backward plane of motion with our blades. It’s very tough to transfer ballroom technique onto the ice, to give the illusion of the proper hip motion and position, with the speed and glide of the blade.
I don't know why Tessa bothers. Except that Virtue Moir have to execute proper technique to have a prayer, and other teams do not. Well, the Shibs have to do it too.* If it's not done perfectly, we hear from analysts - who have just cribbed the info from something they've overheard - that the reason the Shibs and/or Virtue and Moir didn't win was flawed execution of a technical detail. Other teams can ignore the whole translate dance into that forward/backward plane of motion bit, and break world records. Other teams win via creating "a special feeling." Virtue and Moir had to perform per archaic technical standards that don't apply to ice dance anymore, that have been stripped from the game.
When Virtue and Moir were not awarded the gold medal they won at the Sochi Olympics in 2014, we heard that they were artists, but Davis White were the technicians. When, via a magical, perfect storm that thwarted political intent, they crushed the field in 2018 Pyeongchang and were allowed to eek out a win, the narrative positioned Papadakis Cizeron as perhaps not the strongest technicians, but divinely gifted artists. Denied acknowledgment of both technical and "artistic" high cards over the course of 8 years, Virtue and Moir are currently positioned as cunning performers who win by hiding careless execution behind a cold, bold, and somehow unfair confidence. They're scary. And kind of cheating. They're practically Russian.
I don't think Virtue and Moir care, though. They have the gold, they won gold, even though it's the only gold medal win I can think of that is both deserved, and sticks in the craw. It's pretty much living in my craw.
You have to figure out how to incorporate the lateral movement and still keep the flow and integrity of the skating,” she said. “We try to give the effect of ballroom, but we often have to get there through very different means.
Well, they have to. Others, no.
Article:
In dance terms, their Moulin Rouge routine had a ballroom base, a lot of balletic movement in the arms and bits that looked more contemporary. It’s the last category – the one least favoured by the conservative standards of their sport – that they most want to expand in their non-competitive ice dancing.
"Bits that looked more contemporary" is one of my favorite ice dance terms.
Those are descriptive generalizations. But, as we all know, ice dance is now whatever you want it to be, as is only proper in an elite Olympic sport. Conservative, it ain't. If the right deals are in place, you can slop it up out there however you want.
P.S. - are we still describing Papadakis & Cizeron as humble flower childy skaters too sensitive for the competitive world who somehow win because they summon magic, but it's all about the feeling for them, or can we jump on ahead to where they actually are - we deserve it all, and any contrary result is inherently unfair?
*Which makes them both better off than a number of other teams who are never going to get on the podium no matter what they do.
I've had a few weeks with sporadic access to wifi, and when I've been on the web, my attention has been diverted by this:
WTF with the arm.
Yikes.
Her stylist and BFF is Jessica Mulroney, as if one couldn't tell:
Never been a particular Royal Family (or Harry) fan but Mazel Tov to the happy couple.
Jessica Mulroney is married to Ben Mulroney who has interviewed Virtue and Moir at least twice, so there's that.
I know instagram posing has bled into video. All that matters is the 2D shot,so the walk is really a pose. Ivanka Trump is the avatar of this trend. This, though, is a whole new level.
I can't decide if HRH really believes he's engaged to a Michelle Obama/Emma Watson hybrid, or is just marketing it like that. All I know is the posing, duckface and Mulroney-fication of her wardrobe has intensified since the engagement announcement, when one would have anticipated that sort of thing would be on the wane. And the astro-turfing is beyond belief.
Ok, that's off my chest.
*******
I did a drive by to the skating forums and I just can't with the debate between P/C and V/M again focused on non-skating issues and complete skating ignorance. It's predictable but each time it grates. I can't with the oh so surprising latent sour grape-iness in Papadakis and Cizeron becoming manifest. These two wouldn't be in the top ten without the deal making favor swapping bullshit of the past eight years, but they've already developed an enormous sense of entitlement. It still kills me watching Virtue and Moir's absolutely brilliant, knife's edge skate at Pyeongchang while P/C assed their way through, and Virtue Moir barely barely eeked out a win.
I really wish Virtue and Moir would pull the plug already but maybe they think they can milk a few more drops out of will they or won't they. I hope no atom of them is contemplating remaining in the sport. Just let P/C be the 7-8 time in a row World Champions and 2022 Olympic Champions and see how the sport thrives. To tie in the British Royal Family, everybody wonders if the Monarchy will survive after Elizabeth II, and I'm wondering how figure skating is going to sustain any type of interest in ice dance when Virtue and Moir disappear from the competitive scene. P/C have a devoted internet fandom, and figure skating wouldn't be the first organization to confuse internet fanaticism that with actual popularity and the ability to draw a crowd (Virtue and Moir have it all).
As an FYI, I am in the middle of (trying to) travel, and I don't know what the internet situation will be when I arrive at my destination, although it's supposed to have WiFi. But it's also a very outdoorsy trip. I'll be away from my reliable internet, IOW, during most of Worlds.
Here's a placeholder:
10th place. Sheesh. No matter what my attitude has been, they're better than that.
Notable head styling on Marinaro. A little Evan Bates-ey.
I see Virtue Moir are still being cagey re their status AND have yet to go one way or the other about retirement.
We know how ice dance will play out, goldwise at Worlds. Enjoy it, P/C.
Kostner ahead of Zagitova? I need to check that out.
P.S. - re MTM 2, noticing the streamlined presentation. Wish they (and MTM V.1) had gone that way from the first.
Someone should retweet to @LynnRutherford. It's a safe bet Rutherford would respond that canadablue is partisan, which is why someone should ask Lynn if she thinks the actual skating on evidence is partisan. I doubt she'd be able to say. We all know you need to be a super expert to discern these things.
Me, I love the butt jut call outs on Cizeron. Tired of Gabriella getting saddled with the role of the skater dragging down the team. No fan of her, but he's nowhere near top drawer. He's ragged. Show me a case of his sublime edgework, stroking, and beautiful, un-enabled glide. Just show me.
In the comments section of the preceding post, there was some discussion of 2002 Worlds and what a brouhaha ensued when the Israeli team beat the Lithunanians to the bronze.
Setting aside that outrage in figure skating is always super selective and ultra hypocritical, here is the Lithuanian free dance.
Here are the Israelis:
Who can tell? The Lithunanian program is exactly like most of the programs skated by most teams from 1999-2002, or it feels that way. It's bravura in style, with a lot of hair work by the woman, but how much skating is going on? He's on two feet much of the time, on a flat a lot of the time, and mostly uses his edges for stroking, working up the momentum for his next bout of flinging her around.
I'm not saying the Israeli skate deserved to finish ahead of the Lithuanians, but it's one of those cases where, if it WAS rigged, I can't get bent out of shape. Chait is unsteady at least once during her skate, but she's not being dragged and flung around as much as Drobiazko. In fact, they do more skating than the Lithuanians, more non-stroking skating. Assessing skating bona fides amidst the flinging and running, rotating and sliding, posing and presenting by Drobiazko Povilas is challenging. There's less gratuitous non-skating with Chait Sakhnovski, but yes, I'm left with the impression that if I sent the two teams stroking around the ice, the Lithuanians would be stronger. But with the content being what it is, how can all of those who protested the outcome assess who deserved to win. The good skaters who didn't do a whole lot of skating, or the lesser skaters who skated quite a bit, at least comparitively?
The Israelis probably are a cut or so below as far as skill level, but to balance that out, I prefer their costumes (the black and white is really refreshing for that era) and their skate-y (for 2002) program. And they're pretty.
Speaking of pretty:
And the team I understand is ice dance's latest wunderkinder:
We can see the difference, right? Anyone can. Yet among the internet fandom I believe Saucise Firus are gearing up for a PC-esque cult.
Is "ironic" the word for the prevalence of figure skating/ice dance fans who are bored to death by both skating and dance and prefer as little as possible in their ice dance programs? Whatever, they're in luck - the ice dance world agrees with them.
Skating. So nice to see in a skating program. Please please don't let them be Paul Islam'd. Somebody give them a Fix You.
ETA - as I've done a lot, I again googled "lyrical contemporary, origins of" because, as our academic in the comments below surely realizes, "Modern" is relative. In certain historical contexts, it can mean a mere thousand years ago. In other contexts, "modern" can mean my Fitbit.
They describe two of the requirements in ice dance (other than, you know, skating skills):
"You must have a beat, in both programs, that is one of the many rules."
So when it comes to Papadakis Cizeron, is the rule that the music have a beat, and it doesn't matter if they, the skaters, do?
And
"You have to have a change of rhythm, change of mood."
Okey doke. Obviously, an exception has been made for PC, this record-scoring free dance team.
My favorite comment:
"Picking music is definitely the most challenging process. You want to pick something that will stand out, and be different. Also, be different for you. You don't want to keep doing the same style of dance every year." Setting aside that Chock Bates themselves only really changed it up this year, Davis White and Papadakis Cizeron beg to differ.
Let's look at 2014:
Of note, the supposedly sublime Cizeron wobbles like a son of a bitch when he attempts any type of one-foot when lifting Papadakis. Even on a flat. Oh I know, he is the god of skating skills, as long as he's on a flat. And even then it's iffy.
Notice how much skating is in this 2014 program. It's a lot of skating. They both keep their blades on the ice for extended periods of time, criss-crossing that rink. They finished in 13th place. There's a reason.
Been reading in the previous post's comment section that PC fans point to this program as evidence they can be versatile. Come on people, get a grip. The reason they don't DO programs such as this anymore is they don't want to end up in 13th place, or, more to the point, have skating fans think they should. Skating fans don't notice when a team two-foots throughout a program, does things one at a time, doesn't sustain, and performs dumbed down elements. As long as it looks smooth. Skating fans do notice when things are awkward and wobbly.
Their skating skills are the same as they were in 2014. Their programs changed, and the rules altered to help them out, so as not to expose them. They're fake.
Finally, my favorite program from when Virtue and Moir were juniors:
How many podium contending senior teams could do that today
Papadakis and Cizeron are innovative, ground-breaking, all modern things, at least that's what their fans claim. Reinventing the wheel whenever they take the ice with their very very very very modern way of ice dancing.
Here's 57 year-old Sergei Ponomarenko, whose son Anthony is an ice dancer. Sergei won the 1992 Olympic gold medal in ice dance (in Albertville) with his partner/spouse, Marina Klimova.
The Artiste today(ish). So his gold
medal-winning days are awhile back.
There's a whole lot of lead up to this exhibition, but the point will be clear when they begin skating.
Papadakis & Cizeron's so-called breakthrough program was based on Le Parc, a 1990s "Modern" ballet that is more representational than dynamic, just what you want for an ice dance program. Looking at old Klimova/Ponomarenko, I'm wondering if PC's team went back to the 1990s for more than just Le Parc. But it just kills me that this lyrical arms stuff is seen by ANYBODY as avant garde (which, google tells me, means new, experimental. It means unusual ideas, particularly in the arts). Skating aside, in all of figure skating, including ice dance, lyrical ballet-ish is common as mud and has been for over thirty years. One reason ice dance established specific elements for the free, IMO, was that, since the 1980s, lyrical ballet was taking the "discipline", at least where the free dance was concerned, into amorphous mush, where the sport piece of it could hardly be located. There was later some encouragement, for one hot second, to bring ballroom back to the free for a needed re-set before ice dance found itself sliding into complete irrelevancy. Particularly as the compulsory dance (required pattern) portion of the competition was being cut. The compulsories are where these 1990s ice dancers like Klimova Ponomorenko established their "ice DANCE" bona fides before venting their inner Isadora Duncan, or borrowing myopically (but innovatively!) from indigineous dance traditions in the free. So no matter what this show program looks like (or their 1992 Olympic championship program looks like), we know Klimova and Ponomorenko had to skate in closed hold and show mastery of a number of pattern dances/steps and footwork, in order to place themselves into contention before the free. Which is not something Papadakis & Cizeron have ever had to do.
****
Wanted to do this gif of their gala Goose. The bad ass
way she puts her arm behind her head, and the even
badder ass way she steps off without an assist.
You can see Scott drop the mic with his facial
expression (that's how I choose to read it), even if
it looks so easy many people just don't get it.
More than how they execute the elements, which is superior, it's how Scott and Tessa transition into and out of them that sets them so far above every other ice dance team.
Followed the gala on Goldenskate, then watched videos later. When P/C skated, one fan said "The GLIDE." They are on two feet 90% of that skate. Scott and Tessa's exhibition was lift-centric and position change-centric in lifts, yet they were on their edges far more.
Some speculation on the boards as to who can possibly challenge PC in the next quad. (Provided VM retire, and please please please.) Well, good luck, ice dance. The reaction to them, generally and IMO, this entire competition, was a yawn outside their fan base. If they win everything from now til 2022 nobody's going to be watching. I don't know if I can stand another "actual skaters versus non-skaters" rivalry - in fact, I pretty much couldn't stand it this last go round. Maybe they'll come up with another non-skating team to go against PC's non-skating. Going by the judges, the US has made its bid in the deal room, but it probably won't be the Shibs.
P.S. - a truly wonderful fan cam of Virtue and Moir's fd. Most fan cams flatten out the performance, but this one is visceral:
I'm not kidding. These are decent twizzles. If you stop motion any set of twizzles, you're going to catch small out of sync moments where one partner is slightly ahead, and it's the same here. However, essentially, when they are mid-twizzle, when you stop-play, they are at the same point in the spin.
The trouble happens during transitions.
This happens (image above) because Gabriella and Guillame's free legs are held at different angles, which is typical for them. He opens out of twizzle before she does, and clearly so, in real time. She's quick enough to catch up by the time they finish the turn, and their free legs hit the ice at the same time. However, him opening up before she does is very obvious. It's not because they're out of sync during the spins. It happens during the transition - she's behind, and it's because their angles don't match. Whoever has the issue, the other one should be matching it, but nobody bothers. Why should they. It's 10.0, L4 and + 3 regardless.
OK, this is a little obvious, but only if you look. They really do match most of the time when they're spinning (in this performance). By "match" I mean where they are in the rotation, not how they align their bodies. Because that never happens. She's got her way, he's got his way, but as long as they're both limpid and relaxed, who cares.
Even some of their fans are calling on them to do a different sort of program, as if they have genius versatility they've been holding out on us. But I really don't care. I just want them to quit this shit. This is their go to move. I think it's over 50% of their choreography. Squat, squat, squat (which is, of course, a two-footed move. But they are two-footed "skaters")
Ok, look at the angle of her working blade look at his. Look at her arms, look at his. Look at her free leg, look at his. Look at his carriage, look at hers. No wonder they're extolled for their unison. (And not to mention, what magnificent deep edges from both, am I right?)
More twizzling. Here's what happens. He obviously catches his foot before she does. She doesn't catch her foot until she's rotated, so she pre-rotates this twizzle, not adding the feature until she's half rotated, but who's paying attention, right? These are their good twizzles. If VM had done these, it would have been yellow boxes for days. As I said, once they're spinning in this particular performance, they are as in sync as any other good team executing a strong twizzle pass, and she usually gets where she needs to be when the twizzle is underway, and when it ends. But transitioning? This keeps happening. But it's them, so let them set a WR.
A squat, plie or crouch also, of course, lowers the center of balance, and center of gravity, and the very wide foot stance makes their gravitational centers enormous, which everyone knows is a defining attribute of quality skating skills and top notch athleticism. It's a favorite stance of the supposedly sublime Cizeron. He loves to go low.
It pretty much takes any high level skill out of the equation, particularly using an inside edge, as they both do in the image further up. I once saw a grandfather on a train instructing his small granddaughter to plant her feet far apart when she wanted to stand.
Just looking at this performance called to mind Madison Hubbell saying that Virtue and Moir make "lots of little bobbles." Jesus, gaslighting is just a way of life these days, I guess, because her French friends have made a whole bunch of little bobbles their calling card.
This is interesting, although she fawns over Cizeron, who, IMO, is as fake a skater as ever faked (stroke stroke SQUAT. Stroke Stroke GET LOW. Stroke Stroke - TWIZZLE, then do something other than change direction or use your blades to arrest momentum. If he can change direction using his blades without some external support or non-skating assist, I haven't seen it). She doesn't address that not only do P/C's extensions not match, their angles don't match. She sees them as limited, though, and Virtue and Moir as superior, and seems to find P/C inferior mostly due to Papadakis not matching Cizeron.
BUT, then she goes deeper, and reports where the judges placed the rest of the field. It's a tire fire. One judge places a team third, the other places them ninth. It is like this all over the field, not just with placements, but GOE. Are judges even trained anymore, or is it out in the open that the skating is irrelevant when it's all about deal making? It seems to me that the belief the judges get together and review anyone who scores far outside the rest of the panel is myth. Everybody is doing what they want outside the podium, there is no standard, there's nothing.
Uh huh.
One of the most characteristic facets of Scott and Tessa's endless are they or aren't they games with the media is how they just whisk their own elaborate webs of bullshit straight to the curb whenever they feel like it. It's so rude. They spend all this effort ordering fans to buy into their latest re-written crap version of their history or relationship; while fans work overtime letting them know: "Yes, we believe you. That's such a great story." Virtue and Moir address "fan suspicions" that they're together, when these suspicions are, objectively, invisible outside one solitary, insane corner of a google blogspot, and most fans tsk tsk and decry the few crazy fans that make the rest of them look bad.
Why are they taking a niche blog run by a crazy person as representative of the fan base? If I were a regular fan on the forums, I'd be insulted. I actually believe Virtue Moir/their media buddies would pretend fans doubt them even if this blog weren't around, but it sure is convenient for everyone that it is.
Did I imagine they did a 2014 reality show that Scott insisted was a documentary,? Why is he sitting there at a press conference acting like he and Tessa have kept their personal lives in a vault this whole time.
Where is the media getting the idea that fans think they're together when all fans deny they're together, and why is Scott saying he and Tessa might be able to open up their private lives if they retire, when we all saw him having his post-coital coffee at Cassandra's house, and when he told the world he was bringing two condoms to Sochi?
I think they're getting it from Scott and Tessa, who, despite their denials, obviously want fans to think they're together. They can climb down from the cross about it any time now.
Finally, please please please Scott and Tessa, RETIRE. Just for me. I don't care if you "open it up a little bit" or not. I don't care if you remain official platonic best friends for the rest of your lives. I just can't handle 2022 when it's gonna be Papadakis & Cizeron's "turn" to win gold even when you blow them out of the arena. Alternatively, I can't handle watching Tiffany Zahorski and Jonathan Guerreiro (13th place ice dance finishers in Pyeongchang) crowned world champions in 2019 after a year in Gadbois unearths the world's most superior skating skills that were heretofore invisible to the judges until Marie-France discovered how to package them. This is the first time in nearly a year I can visit my own blog w/out getting agita. Yet even though they won, I still get nauseous watching that brilliant Olympic free skate come in second to Papadakis Cizeron's load of crap - in fucking TES. I love that they won gold but the feeling is relief. It would be more joyous if the scoring weren't as sour grapes as it gets.
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
She's enjoying herself. She's loving every second out there. I never even knew Madison Chock liked to figure skate. Who could tell?
What a shame that of all their programs, this one that is actually semi-warm blooded literally crashed at the Olympics.
I've always hated both Chock and Bates' skating and their aggressively frozen performance mode. Enough with the face skating. However, Madison's face after her and Evans' fall had a quality to it that was more than sorrow - there was a naturalness to it I hadn't seen in her since her previous partnership. So I went to watch a clean version of "Imagine". Cup of China.
It *is* their best program since they teamed up, a direction they should have taken ages ago, instead of the S&M-y, dominatrix-y, we're-so-humorlessly-sexy stuff it seems they did over and over. That hard as nails shit made such an impression it feels as if that's all they ever did, although that can't be true.
Madison spends more time off her feet than I think should be permitted in ice dance, but it's the most fluid skating, and the most actual skating - well, at least the most fluid movement - they've done in forever. And what a relief not to watch Evan try to be hot.
What strikes me most is how into it she is, how much apparent joy she is taking in simply moving to that music. Every part of her body is animated to the very end of her extension with a natural flowing, confident energy. Apparently the real her was locked inside Drama Chock all this time. Why didn't they break out of it until now? Most teams make some type of contribution, have an input into their programs. I am guessing they knew they were more of a manufactured Davis White type of deal versus exceptional talents, so they went hard - so to speak - into packaging, just as Davis White did.
Noticed this also:
This is familiar. Not as high scoring as the L4, dumbed down, four-handed clutch job we see from the French however.
I never thought I'd ever use Chock Bates as the positive example in a comparison.
Side thoughts: if VM's return put any kind of glitch into the Kaitlyn Weaver/Tessa Virtue bff-ness, it certainly turned out to be irrelevant.
Have I missed where Papadakis and Cizeron praise VM's skating, their skills, their musicality? Or is it mostly lip service to their resume and competitive drive? I'm just curious if we've got another one way street situation where Virtue Moir prop up their inferior competition, loading them up with praise, while the competition is like, "They're very nice people. Tessa is so stylish."
I enjoyed Scott Hamilton, Leslie Jones, and Adam Rippon commentary on the heat in the VM SD. "Are they dating?! Cause you have to have kissed at least once to do that!' Hamilton. "I don't knooooooooow." He knows.
The score for the French was obscene.
The French were indifferent in the free, and worse in the short. Scott and Tessa had to spike the ball, and I think the crowd helped.
Thank fucking God. Two gold medals, one short of what they deserve. A fake epic battle. Well, a fake epic SKATING battle. A battle where they had zero room for error (despite Madison Hubbell's bullshit) and the French just had to stay standing to get scores a razor's margin from perfect. Virtue Moir cleared the hurdle. I can't even express how important it is, how huge it is, in my heart, and for me, for them to have two golds. I mean, obviously, every VM fan and true skating fan out there feels the same. They should have more, but I'll take it. 20 and 22, gold medal. 28 and 30, gold medal. That'll do it. Should be three.
I can't quite believe it, but they're clutch. At least this time it was possible for them to win, no matter how absurd the standard. A tiny difference between 2018 and 2014, in view of the revolting double standards, but at least the possibility existed, where there was no possibility in 2014. VM, if you are beyond the beyond, we will give you the opportunity to defeat a French team with indifferent skating skills, a French team with careless bodies that are indifferent to what's happening at blade level, even though we'll call that talent.
Congrats too to the Shibs. I had extra incentive to root for them after reading about Madison Hubbell's verbal antics (also didn't want Gadbois to sweep).
My twitter timeline is trending with both Virtue Moir and ShibSibs. I don't do a lot of searching or hashtag following for either, so I'll take it as genuine. I don't see Papadakis Cizeron there at all. Every four years, the civilians can tell who deserves it.
PS - good for VM for going back to the old lift. Bullshit is bullshit, and I'm glad they thumbed their nose at the pandering.
Still absolutely insane that P/C had such a mess of an Olympics and still won the free. This sport needs to be booted out of the Olympics - it's not a sport.
I must say, the faces on Papadakis Cizeron got on my nerves. Dudes, you don't deserve to be anywhere near the medal ceremony. At least I always thought Davis White understood that. Sure, they wanked it that "hard work", all the effort friends, family, country, blah blah blah put into things worked to kind of make them justify it, but I always got the idea that Charlie, at least, understood it was not about who skated the best. So P/C - suck it up. VM are leagues better than you are. Have a little shame.
Finally, it's nice to see Tessa's face. Part of me wonders if her face and eyes during Sochi isn't why they were here. She's as well bred as they come, but she knew they were fucked over in Sochi, and maybe it's harder for her to swallow than Scott. Scott was probably not feeling the greatest in Sochi either, but during the medal ceremony and elsewhere he was dialed in to the expression in her eyes and seemingly distracting her to the utmost. Here, I didn't get the "OMG, we won the Olympics!" vibe we saw in Vancouver. It was much more subdued. I often think winning is like that - real winning, when you deserve to win, or are a megaton better than your rivals. It's what's supposed to happen. It feels natural. Things are right. No need to punch out walls or jump through the rafters. The real problem is when you deserve to win, and don't. It rankles. I feel Tessa has always felt it. If she fucked up, she'd be the first to think she didn't deserve it, even if someone else's skate was inferior in the fundamentals. However, she's not an idiot, and she knows if she and Scott skate their best, they're better than everyone else and should win. So since 2014 she hasn't felt right. Now she feels right.
