Matt Savoie has been able to draw me in through artistry more than any other male skater in the past 20 years. If I have to pick someone current, Jason Brown. Internationally, I would have to go with Alexei Yagudin.
Matt Savoie has been able to drawn me in through artistry more than any other male skater. If I have to pick someone current, Jason Brown.
Thanks for reminding me about Matt. :luv17: Off to YouTube to watch some of Tom Dickson's superb work with Matt.
Yuzuru is absolutely unique but I'm glad skaters like Jason Brown can still be successful in this crazy quads age..
What I find surprising is that overall, male figure skating is much more artistic than ladies. Men skaters manage to combine superior skating skills and technical content, with much more pleasant performance.
There are many men skaters who are outstanding artists, or at least very musical and graceful. But ladies? Nope. Among ladies, polished artists are in very short supply, (with some Japanese and Canadian notable exceptions).
So often unpolished ladies look like "cows on ice" (a Russian dancing term ). Just no comparison with many men skaters. Men don't just out-perform ladies, they leave some dancing teams in the dust, too. Strange, right?
My theory on that is that men have to go through more personal struggle and self-reflection as they come up in skating. Skating is more of a "normal sport" for girls than for boys. So it's something girls can do without having to take any kind of "stand" about their identity, etc. It just becomes part of their identity. But for boys, maybe it's more complicated. Through all kinds of direct and less direct messages boys get from peers in school, social norms, even family, they have to defend their skating, and in that process they have to figure out WHY they are skating and whether it is worth it. And that feeds into developing artistry and self-expression..
Interesting take. Although Russia puts a lot of emphasis on manliness, they have the Russian ballet tradition, so I’ve always felt they weren’t as biased against male skaters as in the US and Canada. At least we seemed to have evolved past the days of commentators making sure to point out that certain male skaters “started as a hockey players” as code to mean hetero and therefore more acceptable. Hopefully (and finally) no one cares anymore. Of course, in Japan, Korea, China, no one looks askance at a boy making the choice to be an ice skater.
You might have hit on why I’ve always preferred men’s skating to women’s skating. Their music tends to be much more varied in genre and I think they need to be more creative in movement since just being a jumping machine doesn’t make a “complete package” skater. (I won’t get into how the playing field had shifted once again to favor big jumps with less choreography, connections, and interpretation. I actually prefer the new scoring system, but because I’m pushing 60, I have fond memories of 6.0 system with separate technical and artistic scores.) Also, although costuming is important, it’s not as crucial to the character of the skater. It’s gonna pretty much be a variation on a unitard, lol. (Btw, glad to see some women choosing them!)
Oops! I guess I should answer this question. Kurt, Alexei, Stefan, Johnny, Jeremy, Daisuke, Joshua, Yuzuru as samurai, Shoma, and Mikail are all skaters I respond to artistically. It seems almost as subjective as why I like a piece of music, but for what it’s worth!
Interesting take. Although Russia puts a lot of emphasis on manliness, they have the Russian ballet tradition, so I’ve always felt they weren’t as biased against male skaters as in the US and Canada. At least we seemed to have evolved past the days of commentators making sure to point out that certain male skaters “started as a hockey players” as code to mean hetero and therefore more acceptable. Hopefully (and finally) no one cares anymore. Of course, in Japan, Korea, China, no one looks askance at a boy making the choice to be an ice skater.
You might have hit on why I’ve always preferred men’s skating to women’s skating. Their music tends to be much more varied in genre and I think they need to be more creative in movement since just being a jumping machine doesn’t make a “complete package” skater. (I won’t get into how the playing field had shifted once again to favor big jumps with less choreography, connections, and interpretation. I actually prefer the new scoring system, but because I’m pushing 60, I have fond memories of 6.0 system with separate technical and artistic scores.) Also, although costuming is important, it’s not as crucial to the character of the skater. It’s gonna pretty much be a variation on a unitard, lol. (Btw, glad to see some women choosing them!)
Oops! I guess I should answer this question. Kurt, Alexei, Stefan, Johnny, Jeremy, Daisuke, Joshua, Yuzuru as samurai, Shoma, and Mikail are all skaters I respond to artistically. It seems almost as subjective as why I like a piece of music, but for what it’s worth!
Not sure about Japan and Korea, but I grew up in Northeastern China (where the majority of China's skaters come from) and I feel like Chinese boys would be encouraged to do many other kinds of sports (ball sports, swimming, even speed skating) before figure skating, while girls would not face that same kind of pressure. I recall seeing a lot more girls than boys at the few Chinese rinks I visited as a child, and even now on Chinese forums you hear rumours of male pairs skaters having a lot more freedom to choose their partners than the female skaters because there are just so many more female skaters around.