Esmerelda est mort

I think my favorite part of this sequence is how the faces angst it up while the bodies are grabbing on, and how MUCH grabbing is required before they even get into the lift. It's not a hand on a shoulder for ballast or Charlie really getting his knees into it to drive her up (which is something Maria Mountain has said is not optimal. She thinks lifts should look easy and light. Why is she conditioning figure skaters?)

Here is the third lift (there was a baby lift as well) and despite the hair and the flail, the arms and the beseeching gestures to the crowd, when you get down to it they have to drop that shit, drop the "style of the dance" and Meryl has to hook her entire arm, up to the armpit, around Charlie's neck, and Charlie has to use BOTH arms to get that heifer, Meryl, in a vise grip, and then they have to paste themselves together before Meryl even puts her foot up. Her free hand is waving around though, like, look how athletic!

 

This is just fucked up. Why don't they just take rock climbing equipment out onto the ice?

There's the arm.

The reason Charlie has to break at the waist and bend in like that is - he's not assisting Meryl, he's fucking hauling Meryl. And obviously, it's not because the girl ate a sandwich over the weekend and morphed back into a three dimensional being. It's lack of control when done "quickly" and it's crap technique. The only way to get it done is to bend down, grab and haul.

And btw, this is not necessarily all on Meryl. We have no idea how "stable" the platform is that Charlie is providing. When I watch him skate I think I'd probably request my coach come out with a harness before I'd crawl up on his thigh.

She's stepping up and needs not only the assist of Charlie's arms, and not just her hand on Charlie, but she has to go around his neck. WTF? A balance point is a balance pint. Just put your hand on his upper arm, Meryl.  Unless the arm around the neck is because their torsos/trunks need to be glued while she gets up, which is hard to believe, considering their mutually exquisite core control and mastery of dissociative movement.

Here we see poor core control/stability, or all of Meryl's weight wouldn't still be in her hind end, as it were. She'd be carrying herself, her energy UP and moving forward. She sure can go "up" on the ice when the alternative is channeling momentum into an edge. Why is she keeping her weight on her back end here and using her arm to pull herself into position instead of using her core and why is she bent forward at the waist instead of opening up her chest and shoulders? The latter isn't "style" - it helps the lift.

Meryl for Christ's sake, tuck your butt under yourself. If you had alignment, you'd be in a stable position by now.

Yeah!

Continued next post.