2020-21 Russian Ladies' Figure Skating

[Scott512]

Sigh. Romeo and Juliette? Really.. ??? There are so many other pieces out there that would have fit Sasha more and that would be brand new songs and not the warhorse of the warhorses.

I kind of feel the same way you do Luna. This is a great song for someone like Nasty G who did a really good Romeo and Juliet a few years ago and I wish she would bring that back now that she's an adult. She got low-balled with scores that the year though. Maybe people are tired of this music. While this is a perplexing music choice for Sasha if she can pull this off it's possible and what on earth can stop her? What if Sasha's maturity is real and she gets real confidence from working with one of the great skaters of all time? She would be out of reach for every skater. Well except Anna.

As for Romeo and Juliet it really is the war horse of war horses for figure skating music. I love this song but most people don't for figure skating.

 

[Supernovaimplosion]

What's the music she's skating to ? It seems like Oh verona but this music is not among those listed by Plushenko.

But I think this program can be very good. I'm a little fed up with Kissing you and I'm afraid Sasha's going to be compared to Alena. But Gentle night is a beautiful piece of music (my favorite from the movie actually) and I don't feel like it's a very used music.

I've always felt that Romeo and Juliet programs should use more music from the 2013 movie. The movie was awful but the soundtrack is very good and Abel Korzeniowski is a genius composer.

 

[DougDorsey]

Sort of a random question, but who generally pays for the program costumes for top Russian ladies? Do the skaters, i.e. their families, usually pay themselves? Or do the clubs usually pay? Or does RusFed pay?

Curious in particular for Team Tutberidze and skaters like Anna and Alina...

 

[DougDorsey]

Sort of a random question, but who generally pays for the program costumes for top Russian ladies? Do they, i.e. their families, usually pay? Or do the clubs usually pay? Or does RusFed pay?

Curious in particular for Team Tutberidze and skaters like Anna and Alina...

Oh, and also, what do ladies costumes typically cost in Russia? For example, a costume like Anna's lovely Perfume dress from last season...

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-11/08/138540438_15732230784871n.jpg

 

[Scott512]

I really can't imagine Juliet doing a cantilever

Sasha believes she is unstoppable and that the only thing that stopped her with eg was that the coaches were fighting her on certain things. If she can pull this classical music piece off and win big then she can do anything. But can she still do a cantilever if she is still is growing? I think if Sasha was standing next to Aliona and Anna now she would dwarf them.

Open skates should be eye opening to say the least.

 

[Mathman]

I really can't imagine Juliet doing a cantilever

I can! The real Juliet was no shrinking violet mooning about. She was a spitfire who knew how to go after what she wanted. :yes:

 

[IndiaP12]

I’m really happy about a Romeo and Juliet program for Sasha because it’s the perfect combination of powerful and elegant for her. And I’ve always wanted her to skate to montagues and capulets [emoji7] however I’m kind of sick of people mix R&J pieces from 3 different composers, can someone just do an all Prokofiev program please [emoji31]

 

[IndiaP12]

And to be honest Plushenko & team are super warhorsey and all their skaters have used overused or common music so far. I thought Sergei would bring some originality

 

[yume]

And to be honest Plushenko & team are super warhorsey and all their skaters have used overused or common music so far. I thought Sergei would bring some originality

At least with Gleikhengauz i discovered Ludovico Einaudi and Ramin Djawadi. There is some originality even if the cuts aren't the bests sometimes.

 

[TallyT]

At least with Gleikhengauz i discovered Ludovico Einaudi and Ramin Djawadi. There is some originality even if the cuts aren't the bests sometimes.

The cuts to Djawadi's wonderful music were bad, but then I had a think and to be fair, given the pieces chosen... they weren't at all easy to cut and rearrange. Some fannish musicvids do a great job though maybe all the choreographers could start watching them for strictly educational purposes

 

[yume]

The cuts to Djawadi's wonderful music were bad, but then I had a think and to be fair, given the pieces chosen... they weren't at all easy to cut and rearrange. Some fannish musicvids do a great job though maybe all the choreographers could start watching them for educational purposes

The cuts on Trusova's program weren't so dirty. But it was definitely better for Tsurskaya's program.

But true that he wastes good music by making bad cuts or mixing it with songs that don't fit. Song for the little sparrow only would have been enough for Tsurskaya 2017-2018 LP.

 

[colormyworld240]

Sort of a random question, but who generally pays for the program costumes for top Russian ladies? Do the skaters, i.e. their families, usually pay themselves? Or do the clubs usually pay? Or does RusFed pay?

Curious in particular for Team Tutberidze and skaters like Anna and Alina...

I *think* the federation gives each skater a set amount of funding based on their level and whether they're on the national team, and then if that doesn't cover it the skaters have to pay for the rest (by themselves, their parents or their sponsors). Same thing with choreography, coaching, etc. if I understand the state system correctly.

I recall Alina using Evgenia's old dress because she couldn't afford a new one for her first season, Radionova saying her team had to cut their own music and couldn't afford new choreographers until she got more sponsors, and Tarakanova giving a breakdown of what her parents had to pay for her FS career (choreo, costumes, etc.)

 

[dunffvanstorn]

The cuts to Djawadi's wonderful music were bad, but then I had a think and to be fair, given the pieces chosen... they weren't at all easy to cut and rearrange. Some fannish musicvids do a great job though maybe all the choreographers could start watching them for strictly educational purposes

Marin Honda’s cuts were amazing in my opinion (someone posted the video from her FS in 2017 in this thread or the other, I’m not sure).


Enviado do meu iPhone usando Tapatalk

 

[Scott512]

Yeah so if i understand we will be able to watch videos of this test? It's great if it's true!

Plushenko promised a new Sasha, and Romeo and Juliet is certainly a new style for Sasha. It will be interesting, for some reason my gut instinct says this could be good, I guess we’ll see.

We dont need a new Sasha. She just needs her LP to be more stable than last seasons GPF, Rusnats and euros where her LP let her down. If Sasha goes clean she racks up the points and wins.

And please Plushy we dont need a new Aliona.

 

[dunffvanstorn]

We dont need a new Sasha. She just needs her LP to be more stable than last seasons GPF, Rusnats and euros where her LP let her down. If Sasha goes clean she racks up the points and wins.

And please Plushy we dont need a new Aliona.

I need Sasha with good choreo, better posture and interpreting the music, which I have recently found out she’s capable of:


https://youtu.be/ncI0h6Ahg_g

Innapropriate choreo for her age, though, but she’s trying to sell it way more than with Eteri.

Now, can someone PLEASE work on her crossovers? Is this asking too much?

 

[kmw227]

I need Sasha with good choreo, better posture and interpreting the music, which I have recently found out she’s capable of:


https://youtu.be/ncI0h6Ahg_g

Innapropriate choreo for her age, though, but she’s trying to sell it way more than with Eteri.

I always thought she performed her Big Spender short program really well, too (although it was also inappropriate for her age )

 

[Amei]

We dont need a new Sasha. She just needs her LP to be more stable than last seasons GPF, Rusnats and euros where her LP let her down. If Sasha goes clean she racks up the points and wins.

And please Plushy we dont need a new Aliona.

Her FS didn't let her down last year; her inability to do her quads cleanly in competition let her down last year.

 

[Amei]

Completely off subject from the last few pages but I came across this on Instagram - Shcherbakova as a small child with Rafael (last picture) From what I've ever heard of Shcherbakova she's only ever been with Eteri/Sambo so I'm guessing this was some type master class or camp that she did?

 

[dunffvanstorn]

Her FS didn't let her down last year; her inability to do her quads cleanly in competition let her down last year.

A free skate with a terrible song/choreographic/image choice???

Let me point out a few reasons why Sasha’s programs didn’t work out last season (not that I think they did in the previous one too):

1. Short program: first half with good music, a lot of effort to make her look more mature and musical; it works. Second half with a too fast music, which her skating skills not allowing her to follow it. She looks clumsy, the choreo is bad and doesn’t help her. She ends the program exhausted (that’s why she said right after she moved to Pluschenko that she wanted SLOW music).

2. Choice of dresses: her short program dress before the revelation is hideous, and I’m usually a fan of Olga’s work. The dress makes her look even more clumsy and the white part underneath the skirt looks like a diaper when she jumps, it’s just terrible. During the revelation, the mechanism doesn’t work, it’s too obvious how she changes the dress and it’s done in an ugly way, along with the ugly dance moves. Those moves could work wonderfully for a very accomplished dancer like Baryshnikov, but not for our Little Sasha. The free skate outfits weren’t good, but weren’t nearly as bad as the short program one.

3. Free skate: “Let’s make a Daenerys program with the Night King’s theme song, and try to emote with the music, right, Sasha?”. If the image they were trying to go for was the Night King’s, then they made an excellent choice, because he ends up falling and losing too. How confusing it must have been for her trying to impersonate power/strength/femininity with The Night King’s Theme. What were they thinking!???? I wouldn’t be able to interpret it either, because that song showed up in the series whenever we were supposed to feel FEAR. Make your skater emote in a frightened way and your skater will fall off quads. Simple like that. Lack of choreography. Lack of interpretation. Terrible concept, trying to use a character with another character’s soundtrack. I could spend a whole day talking about the many reasons why that program didn’t and could never work.

4. Sasha believed she could only beat the other girls with 5 quads. She put all her faith and confidence in her quads since at least 2 seasons before. That’s the way her belief system was raised. Once she realized her quads could not be enough to win every competition, she lost confidence in herself. She looked to the side and saw Anna and Aliona with beautiful dresses, beautiful programs, and what did she feel like? Like the Ugly Duckling among the three of them, the one who couldn’t dance, who couldn’t interpret and whose entire confidence came from the ability to jump quads, something that, in that moment, wasn’t even allowing her to win. There was already tension between her and Eteri and it started to grow with the poor results. She lost confidence in Eteri and in herself, and it just wouldn’t work, because if you tell a girl who believes she’s all about quads that she cannot jump as many quads as she believes she needs to, you break her belief system. Was Eteri right to prioritize stability with less quads? Absolutely. But somehow, the way it was done made Sasha lose her ground, because she lost the one thing that was hers: the power of her quads. Sasha herself said - she doesn’t want to break records, she wants to land all her quads clean. She said herself she didn’t feel as sad for being in 3rd place, she felt the saddest for not being able to land all her quads.

 

[Lunalovesskating]

I just noticed that the music in Sasha's clip is "O Verona" by Craig Armstrong, which Plushenko did not list. As Kissing You is NOT composed by Craig Armstrong like Plushenko posted one can assume that Sasha won't have Kissing You at the beginning of the program and it is probably not in her program at all, but instead the program has "O Verona" at the beginning like shown in the clip .