Anna Shcherbakova | Page 119 | Golden Skate

Anna Shcherbakova

SXTN

Final Flight
Joined
Jun 5, 2008
Anya, congratulations for your first senior win and the first 4Lz landed by a senior lady :love: I am so happy, she truly deserved this :clap:

First of all, Anya's skate was just magical, she makes you enter a totally different world with this program, she is charming and expressive, and her musicality is highlighted so beautiful by it! And that 4Lz, wow! What a beauty! Judges underscored her yesterday, and yet she found only motivation and grit in this , enough to land the first 4Lz completed by a lady in a senior competition. I am so proud of her, and she looked so happy and relaxed during the medals ceremony! And this is just the beginning, her PCS will surely rise from this level (low 8s today), the judges are starting to know her and acknowledge her power.

Judging was extremly strict today. Under normal circumstances this would have been 90/68 something..
 

lappo

Final Flight
Joined
Feb 12, 2016
I was at Lombardia today and I want to congratulate Anna for a wonderful performance, her first senior gold medal and the membership of the "senior quadsters club". She was lovely and skated with much more determination today... I was a little worried because she was super upset after the second fall in the warm up but she came out to deliver! Congrats again, Anna! :love:
 

Scott512

Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 27, 2014
Congratulations Annucka! She really is here to stay.

How big a win is this exactly? It's not a Grand Prix event is it?
 

Imagine

Medalist
Joined
Feb 22, 2014
Why did she receive a 1.00 deduction??? :scratch2:

I was almost expecting her to do 2 4Lzs just to spite the judges after how badly they robbed her on the SP.
 

karina17

Final Flight
Joined
Mar 22, 2018
Why did she receive a 1.00 deduction??? :scratch2:

I was almost expecting her to do 2 4Lzs just to spite the judges after how badly they robbed her on the SP.

She didn't, the score box was broken so it looked like the last few skaters all had deductions, but no one got them on the protocols.
 
Joined
Oct 8, 2017
I love how effortlessly responsive to the music she is. Looking at the last three photos (all with the flame dress), you can tell exactly which part of the music she's responding to. In the first she is fierce and harsh in her face and body positioning, so you know that is when the music first changes to Firebird and the accents hit hard. In the second and third her face is more pained and her body language is more gentle and smooth, so you can tell that's during the finale when the music becomes dramatic but smoother and calmer than before. She is brilliant in her musicality.

For many other skaters you can post photos of them at any point in the skate and the face/body language will be too similar to tell which point of the skate it is. With Anna, it is obvious.

Her musicality is an innate gift I feel. It was there in the early years too, if you watch her videos from her " dream catcher " days and earlier.
This year's FP is magical . She is unique.
 

Edwin

СделаноВХрустальном!
Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 5, 2019
Interesting article about music and choreography of Anna's FP (sorry, but my english language skills do not allow me to provide good quality translation, so you may use google translate)

Here is my take at it.

The avant-garde ballet of Anna Shcherbakova

Since the year before last, in which Eteri Georgiyevna first entrusted Daniil Gleikhengauz with staging programs, ballet performances have become a characteristic feature of Tutberidze's training staff. In the Olympic season, these were iconic stagings of Black Swan and Kitri for Alina Zagitova, in the season 2018-19 - her own “Carmen” and “Spartacus” for Kamila Valiyeva.

No wonder: Daniil - son of Bolshoi ballerina Lyudmila Shalashova (whose recent sudden death shocked many fans of Russian figure skating) - was accustomed to ballet culture since childhood, and Lyudmila Borisovna's participation in TeamTutberidze was expressed not only in choreographic training of pupils, also in teaching of characteristic ballet movements and their implementation in Khrustalniy’s ballet productions.

In the past offseason, I managed to get upset by studying the announced programs of Eteri Georgiyevna's pupils, not finding a single ballet among the declared music pieces. It was all the more joyful to see at the Test Skates Anna Shcherbakova’s free program staged to music from Firebird by Igor Stravinsky - in spite of everything, TeamTutberidze is not ready to abandon its own style, which is expressed, among other things, in carefully transferring ballet plasticity and aesthetics to the ice.

Last week, we saw the program at Anna's first official competition - certainly, a wonderful performance, not only with clean elements, but also with a deep emotional impact. Last year showed that, despite her fragility and airiness, Anna copes with strong, solemn classical music perfectly, this is why the choice of the expressive Firebird this season is certainly very successful. Let's talk a little about this program's interesting composition and what this is due to.

First of all, we recall that we are talking about a program in which a quadruple jump is planned (knowing TeamTutberidze, it was to be expected, and perhaps more than one), before which the skater needs to properly accelerate. The directors had a non-trivial task: to put acceleration in the program's outline in such a way it doesn't look like “empty skating”. Music with a measured, not too fast pace is well suited for this task, as, for example, in Anna’s last year’s free program to the music of Saint-Saens, where the unhurried beginning of "Rondo cappricioso" was allotted to the acceleration. In the case of staging Firebird, this problem cannot be so easily solved: most of the ballet is incredibly dynamic, accented. In addition, being an avant-garde artist, Stravinsky liked to experiment and constantly varied the tempo, which is absolutely useless for setting up such a technically complex element .

Daniil Markovich and Eteri Georgiyevna did not solve this problem head on but searched for suitable passages in a piece of music, they decided to approach it from the other end and turned to pieces of composers from around the same time as Stravinsky. For the introductory part of Anna's program, Eric Satie's Gnossienne No. 1 was chosen. Satie was a wonderful French composer and pianist, one of the ideological inspirers of 'Les Six', a creative association of young musicians of the 1910s and 20s in Paris, different in creative settings, but unanimously striving for novelty and at the same time for simplicity. From the entire musical heritage of that time, only two composers are still regarded with reverence: Satie and Stravinsky.

Satie and Stravinsky were well acquainted, spoke positively of each other's work and admitted to the significant mutual influence of their music. Consequently, the combination of their musical works within the framework of a single program is stylistically quite justified. At the same time, from a purely utilitarian point of view, Gnossienne No. 1 with its simplicity and leisurelyness (the name itself: Gnossienne No. 1 - Lent translates as "Gnosian No. 1 - Slow") allows Anna to accelerate before jumping, without spending too much energy on acting out numerous musical accents, as later in "The Firebird".

Further, the challenge of TeamTutberidze was how to conquer the transition from one part to the other, so the program will be perceived as a unity, without “joints”. Well, TeamTurberidze wouldn't have been TeamTutberidze if it had not chosen the most elegant and, again, absolutely stylistically justified solution: changing the costume while spinning in the middle of the program. In fact, on Anna we see two completely independent dresses of very bright, expressive colors without the usual gradient transitions (quite in the spirit of avant-garde) that are usual for figure-skating dresses, each of which refers to the staged embodiments of the chosen music.

I propose to enjoy the magnificent performance of Gnossienes by Satie performed by one of the brightest stars of the Mariinskiy Theater - Ul'yana Lopatkina - in duet with Ivan Kozlov. Pay attention to the extraordinary modern choreography and color scheme: the same simple blue color without halftones, as well as light, airy fabrics and a similar skirt design on Ulyana and Anna (the quality, of course, is anything but good, but unfortunately, this is the only video I managed to find): https://youtu.be/62ib6SmLkGU

After transformation, Anna’s dress become bright scarlet - the same rich colour is used in the ballet productions of The Firebird. It is also noteworthy that Anna's dress designer transferred the same drop-shaped feathers like “Turkish cucumbers” to the upper part of the dress, as were present on the ballet tutu.

Also, the advantages of this costume include a well-chosen mesh in Anna's skin tone and beautiful embroidered elbow gloves that emphasise the work of the hands. The disadvantage noted by many before me are the gold stripes on the blue dress, rather more functional than aesthetic, but, knowing TeamTutberidze we can soon expect the dress to be finalised (as was the case with Alina's tutus and the Juliet's dress for Alyona Kostornaya). And strictly speaking, even if everything is left as it is, it is still the most magical, elegant and justified transformation of a costume I have ever seen. It not only causes enthusiastic collective sighs from the public, but also obviously gives great joy to Anna herself.

Thus, the new ballet performance staged by TeamTutberidze and performed by Anna Shcherbakova once again proves that high art does not interfere with, but rather helps to achieve sports records, if you approach the task with such impeccable taste as Eteri Georgiyevna and Daniil Markovich. Anna was the first pupil of Eteri Georgiyevna to compete in senior competitions this season, demonstrating “ready-made” performances of short and free programs. With regard to the other "3A's", there is still some intrigue regarding their costumes, we can fully appreciate these a little later, but for now we can say that they certainly will not leave us indifferent.

P.S .: this is my first blog on sports.ru, so I will be glad to receive comments, comments and suggestions. Especially welcome are wishes for which programs' analysis you would also like to see.
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https://www.sports.ru/tribuna/blogs/artinsport/2575489.html
 
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Alex65

Final Flight
Joined
Aug 11, 2018
Country
Russia
https://www.sports.ru/tribuna/blogs/artinsport/2576413.html
Another article by the same author. This time about Anna’s short program. In my opinion, the author has great literary talent, it is easy and interesting to read the text. Many interesting images. Anna is lucky that she has such fans.
I feel sorry for non-Russian speakers because here need a literary translation. Can someone try?
 

Edwin

СделаноВХрустальном!
Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 5, 2019
https://www.sports.ru/tribuna/blogs/artinsport/2576413.html
Another article by the same author. This time about Anna’s short program. In my opinion, the author has great literary talent, it is easy and interesting to read the text. Many interesting images. Anna is lucky that she has such fans.
I feel sorry for non-Russian speakers because here need a literary translation. Can someone try?

I hope my attempt is good enough, for the original is really well written.

Defenseless Beauty - Perfumer by Anna Shcherbakova

In the summer of 2019, the figure skating community was stirred up by this news: Anna Shcherbakova, in the new season transitioning from juniors to seniors, will perform to the music from the movie "Perfumer. The Story of a Murderer." Many lances were broken in the attempt to find out whether this was the right choice, but it seems to me that we got the answer. If not at the Open Test Skates, then at Anna’s recent performance in Lombardy for sure. The short program turned out to be extremely successful, largely due to the performing skills of the skater, but also due to the competent selection of the image, which I'll talk about in this post.

The book "Perfumer. The Story of a Murderer", written by the German writer Patrick Suskind, was published in 1985 and made a splash in the literary world. The story of the "monster genius" has spread throughout the world in significant print runs and twenty years after the publication was filmed by compatriot writer and director Tom Tykwer. The director and composer, in collaboration with Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Haile, composed the musical accompaniment for the film, creating an alarming, tense and mysterious atmosphere in the film that fully matches the mood of the book.

The book is a biography of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille - the son of a fish merchant born in a Paris cesspool, whose amazing and terrible fate is presented in the pages of the book as vividly as if it has really existed. Grenouille is a “abomination of nature,” who has become an outcast of society from birth because of his unusual and contradictory features. He was able to distinguish any smell in the world, even those that didn't have a name - and at the same time did not have a smell of his own. He was incredibly tenacious and completely devoid of any humanity. People instinctively hated and avoided him, and he paid them back the same. The most significant event in his life was a meeting with an unnamed beauty with plums - her fragrance seemed to him a miracle after the stench in which he grew up, she smelled like beauty itself. But, incapable of love and generally any manifestation of affection, he immediately strangled her, and the only thing that upset him was the inability to retain this magical smell. This is what prompted Grenouille to become the greatest creator of smells in history, creating the aroma of love and beauty.

To create this elixir of love, Grenouille needed the aroma of 13 innocent girls, pristine with the barely blossoming beauty of youth - it is in such girls, as Grenouille discovered by his sensitive nose, that the aroma is at its most refined and beautiful. The crown of his composition was to be Laure Richis, daughter of a wealthy man, the most beautiful girl in the city. But for Grenouille, who lives exclusively by his hypertrophied sense of smell, Laura's external beauty did not mean anything - he was only interested in her smell.

In fairness, it must be said that, if these 13 beauties agreed to lie down voluntarily on rags soaked with grease, they could have saved their lives, since Grenouille was obsessed with their smell, and not with murder. But it was impossible to imagine such a thing in the 18th century, which is why this “monster with talent” methodically dealt with his victims, collecting their aromas one after another, like a harvest. In the end, having reached the ideal, creating perfumes that made a whole crowd of people go crazy with love for him, Grenouille suffered a terrible disappointment:

"What he always wanted, namely, to be loved by other people, at his moment of success became unbearable for him, because he himself did not love them, he hated them."

For the short program of Anna Shcherbakova, the choreographer Daniil Gleikhengauz selected excerpts from three parts of the soundtrack for the film: “The Girl with the Plums”, “Meeting with Laura” and “The Killing of Laura”, which suggests that Anna in this program personifies the collective image of the girls tortured by Grenouille. However, I would not interpret this image so literally: it’s not in vain the costume chosen for the skater does not copy the clothes of the heroines from the film, but is a dress with an abstract decor, decorated with a pattern of red petals.

In my understanding, the leitmotif of this program is one of the key motives of the book: defenselessness, the doom of beauty in the face of senseless cruelty. Grenouille is inevitable, like an evil fate: nothing can stop him in his murderous pursuit of perfection, and beauty is doomed to die in his hands, only leaving behind its most unstable trace - its fragrance.

The choice of this topic for Anna is absolutely justified - with her natural fragility and expressiveness, she tells this tragic story of beauty on ice. Her expression is strict and solemn, while Anna interacts a lot with the audience: “Nothing justifies the destruction of beauty and innocence” - as if she were speaking to the audience. The final gesture at the end of the program is the last tear? - Anna makes this gesture in silence, followed only by this last blow, similar to the strike of a huge clock.

Anna’s program is tragic - but it is not a thriller or a horror movie. It is a deep philosophical statement, reminiscent of how fragile beauty is, and how difficult it is to preserve something truly beautiful in this world of people who sometimes forget they are human.
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https://www.sports.ru/tribuna/blogs/artinsport/2576413.html

Really well written and wrought piece, and again a testimony to the genius of Daniil Gleikhengauz and Eteri Tutberidze in staging programs that transcend the boundaries of art.
 
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