If you’re a devoted skating fan, you’ve been juggling simultaneous live streams for the past few weeks, trying to keep up with the deluge of events. If you’re more laid back about your love for figure skating, you might not have known there was anything going on at all. Regardless, there is no way you have watched every interesting program from September’s bumper crop of Junior Grand Prix and Challenger Series competitions. I say this as someone who has redefined the concept of “work-life balance” as running multiple live streams on one computer monitor while answering emails and building spreadsheets on the other.
Despite my plans to devote my life to recognizing the key points in the Finnstep, I have been doing other things with my weekends lately, and am now two full weeks behind on having lots of feelings about ice dance. So here are my slightly stale but nonetheless fervent opinions on our shining Broadway preseason.
Junior Grand Prix Riga
Elizaveta Khudaiberdieva & Andrey Filatov (Russia), Free Dance
This is the only program I am covering from this event, somewhat because I don’t want to dwell too long on stuff that happened a whole month ago, but mostly because Elizaveta Khudaiberdieva is the sun that blocks out all others. I hardly remember Maria Kazakova and Georgy Reviya’s fine free skate, the only performance to rival this one, as I am completely hung up on Khudaiberdieva’s ability to switch partners over the summer and show up as if nothing has changed. I’ve been referring to Filatov as “Whatsisbucketov,” which is unfair: he’s remarkably capable of keeping up with a skilled and showy partner and appears content to execute his elements perfectly without any hope of recognition. Those elements are designed not only to make Khudaiberdieva shine like the star she is, but also to dazzle the judges. Their twizzle sequence has a choreographic mini-lift in the middle and a knee slide exit. Their rotational lift to stationary lift winds and weaves from one elegant body position to the next and gains momentum with the music. It is hard to understand why any of the other teams showed up to this event.
Junior Grand Prix Chelyabinsk
Nadiia Bashynska & Peter Beaumont (Canada), Rhythm Dance
The Russians came up one medal short of a clean sweep in Chelyabinsk, and this rising Canadian team were the spoilers who snagged bronze. Bashynska and Beaumont earned that medal in the first round, with a The King and I program that capitalizes on their regal elegance and fairy tale whimsy. Beaumont’s apt Yul Brynner impression shows off his posture and core strength, while Bashynska makes their athletic twizzles look airy and easy. Like almost everyone else, they dropped some levels on the Tea-Time Foxtrot – a devilish pattern dance clearly designed to punish the weak and torment the strong – but they’re one of the few teams that perform it like they’re not afraid of it, keeping the character of their music and tracing curves that cover the whole rink rather than hugging the edges. They’re a rapidly rising team with a clear and unique aesthetic, and they’ll continue to catch the judges’ eye because they are so effortlessly themselves.
Elizaveta Shanaeva & Devid Naryzhnyy (Russia), Free Dance
Russia stacked its deck in the team assignments in Chelyabinsk, and the goal of raising the home team to the top should be neither controversial nor surprising. Shanaeva and Naryzhnyy have emerged as the Russian juniors to beat this season, with dominating technical ability and consistently strong execution – but not a lot of personality. Their music gives them a lot of expressive range to play with, but in the end, they could be skating to anything. Shanaeva isn’t as naturally extroverted of a performer as many of her competitors, and Naryzhnyy sometimes looks like he’s holding back his artistry to encourage her to shine. That limited charisma makes them look juniors-y even when they’re showing off an extraordinary combination lift that floats from one difficult position to the next or flying through effortless twizzles. They’re a talented and proficient team, but not an exciting team. Please, Russia, find Naryzhnyy a partner with a bigger personality, who will allow his inner diva to shine.
Katarina Wolfkostin & Jeffrey Chen (USA), Free Dance
Wolfkostin and Chen suffered a disastrous fall in their rhythm dance, but they surged back in the free dance, placing 2nd in the segment and coming up a few tenths of a point short of overall bronze. The dominant narrative about this team is that Wolfkostin has finally found a partner who can keep up with her, but the real story might be the other way around, with Chen as the key player in a team that finally allows his partnering skills to shine. Together, they’re capable of some of the most difficult and explosive twizzles in juniors, traversing most of the rink and setting the emotional tone for their program. At times, they need to dig deeper into their blades to get those clear edges and turns. Improving those fundamentals will likely lift them onto the podium at next year’s Junior Grand Prix, and their current skills already make them serious medal contenders in the stacked field at US Nationals.
Irina Galiyanova & Grayson Lochhead (Canada), Free Dance
Fifth place was a major achievement for Galiyanova and Lochhead, who also served the most fun of any free dance in Chelyabinsk. Their combination of Latin ballroom and contemporary lyrical felt fresh while incorporating the blessed tackiness of old-school ice dance. Galiyanova also gave us the fearless diva moves that her competitors held back from. They’re growing into some showy, challenging technical elements, too, like a twizzle sequence that runs through a sampler platter of difficult free leg positions. At this point, the hard stuff still looks hard for them, but they have the right kind of energy and expression to smooth out their performance quality before long.
Lombardia Trophy
Anastasia Shpilevaya & Grigory Smirnov (Russia), Rhythm Dance
This season’s Broadway theme is bringing us a whole lot of Grease, and this pair of quirky fan-favorite Russians might be the most qualified current team to interpret this particular camp classic. Their twizzles and lift are wild and woolly, but they’re perfectly synchronized to both the timing and the feel of the music. It’s hard to take your eyes off Shpilevaya, one of her generation’s finest purveyors of the ice dance smize, but Smirnov is dream-cast as Danny Zuko, equal parts menacing and innocent, making you believe he wears that faux leather jacket when he’s off the ice, too. A similarly bluesy free dance gives them a second opportunity to show off what they do best, including one of the season’s most creative and attractive stationary lifts, as well as four minutes of Smirnov’s bare arms.
Charlene Guignard & Marco Fabbri (Italy), Free Dance
I’m on the record as not often liking Guignard and Fabbri’s programs, although I consistently admire their technical ability and will never argue with their high scores. I’d hoped they would make me a fan by skating to David Bowie this season, but instead they’ve raised my rock snob hackles by performing mostly to wan orchestral covers of “Space Oddity” that bleach out the original’s Space Age anxiety and weirdness. If you’re going to do a glam rock free dance about aliens, give me glitter eye makeup and jittery sci-fi transition moves, or go home. When I set aside my personal biases, I find a lot to appreciate here: the choreographic moves at the end are unique and beautiful, and few teams approach Guignard and Fabbri’s effortless precision in their steps. But this program is too conventionally pretty to say anything special, and that’s a disadvantage as so many of their competitors have made more daring choices.
Alexandra Nazarova & Maxim Nikitin (Ukraine), Free Dance
I wasn’t going to cover this one, but it gets so balls-out weird in the last minute that I felt you all should watch it if you haven’t yet. Are those cool moves right before the music cut a knee slide? A lift? Everything all at once, topped with quirk sauce? (The judges have the first one in as a curve lift and the second as a choreo sliding movement.) I want to give them a special medal for steering so courageously into the bizarre that there are actual face stickers involved.
Marjorie Lajoie & Zachary Lagha (Canada), Free Dance
It takes serious self-confidence to go full Freddie Mercury in a competitive program, and frankly, that’s what most Queen programs are missing. Lajoie is normally one of the biggest personalities in ice dance, but for these four minutes, she lets her partner rock out and shine. Even the lifts are all about Lagha: his controlled rotation, lower-body flexibility, and talent for staying in character while Lajoie flips and contorts in his arms. Those intricate moves got the better of them a few times here, and the technical errors held them down to 7th place, a disappointment for reigning World Junior Champions who had surely hoped to ride that success into their senior debut. Still, they’ve matured notably. At times in the past, it seemed like this team had locked itself in an internal battle for the spotlight, but as they’ve moved up to seniors, they’re using their strong personalities to their advantage more and more.
Autumn Classic International
Carolane Soucisse & Shane Firus (Canada), Rhythm Dance
A lot of teams have chosen jukebox musicals for the Broadway rhythm, and most of those programs are dead-eyed, largely because it’s hard to Finnstep to the oldies. Soucisse and Firus, however, have the advantage of music cuts that play into the pattern dance, so the prescribed hops and twizzles align with the beat and dynamics. It takes genuine skill to nail those steps and turns with precision, and from a judging perspective, Soucisse and Firus aren’t there yet; they missed every key point in the pattern and earned only a B level. A week later at the US Classic, they got another B, which means they’re going to have to grind the hell out of the Finnstep in practice to make it competitive in time for the Grand Prix. Other elements are exceptional, though, like the closing stationary lift, a death-defying feat of balance.
Lilah Fear & Lewis Gibson (Great Britain), Free Dance
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who watched season two of Pose and thought it would make a good free dance, and I’m extra glad that Fear and Gibson were the ones to take us back to the ’90s. If their entire career consists of period-specific nightclub styles, we will never be bored. Strictly speaking, the judges at the Autumn Classic didn’t score them on the sickening sharpness of their voguing. Except that they did, because the high grades of execution that Fear and Gibson earned for the trio of choreographic elements at the end of their program were a major factor in their silver medal. It’s refreshing to see a judging panel recognize the difficulty of keeping those elements in character, and reward Fear and Gibson accordingly. That kind of radical fairness encourages creativity and diversity in the sport, and helps risk-taking teams rise to the top.
Piper Gilles & Paul Poirier (Canada), Free Dance
I’m sure you are all shocked to learn that I’m obsessed with Gilles and Poirier’s free dance for this season. Nobody else skates like them, and their commitment to theme and character makes their programs more like theater than sports. This may be the lowest-concept free dance they’ve ever performed, the closest they’ve come to portraying themselves on the ice, two people connecting with each other through a beautiful piece of music. Technically, they’re impressive as always, although the rough September edges poked through in a couple of places: a timing issue at the start of their twizzles, a wobble off Poirier’s edge on a lift. That’s good news, though, because it means that this program – the highest-scoring free dance of the season as I write – has the potential to score even higher.
U. S. Challenge Skate
This novice/junior domestic event took place concurrently with the US Classic, and if you missed it, you can watch the whole free dance for free. The junior-level teams who competed here are all a few levels below the American skaters with Junior Grand Prix assignments, in terms of scores and difficulty, but all are pretty good. The ice dance talent pool remains deep in the United States. The free dance got off to a terrifying start, as Jenna Hauer fell about 30 seconds into her program and could not stand up; a trainer and her partner, Christian Bennett, had to carry her off the ice. Samantha Ritter and Jim Wang’s superior speed and precise edges earned them gold by only 0.05 of a point over Anna Nicklas and Max Ryan, who had led after the short dance. But Nicklas and Ryan were my favorites of the event, bringing big Sansa energy to their Game of Thrones free dance, as well as brilliant transitions in and out of their dance spin. The altitude in Salt Lake City got the best of them, though. They became visibly winded in the final minute of their program and had to take a moment to catch their breath in their closing pose. When the elements aren’t conspiring against them, Nicklas and Ryan are the most likely of the teams here to break through the established junior ranks at Nationals.
Junior Grand Prix Gdansk
Avonley Nguyen & Vadym Kolesnik (USA), Rhythm Dance
More than halfway through the Junior Grand Prix series, one thing has become clear: it’s almost impossible to earn a level 4 on the Tea-Time Foxtrot. Nguyen and Kolesnik were the only team in Gdansk to do it. Their Aladdin program gets goofier and more carefree every time they perform it, in no small part because this is the role Kolesnik was born to play. The source material is a barrage of winks and nods, and this choreography captures that playfulness, especially as they breeze through some of the toughest twizzles in juniors to “Can your friends do this? Can your friends do that?” At this point, they’re literally taunting the rest of the field.
Miku Makita & Tyler Gunara (Canada), Rhythm Dance
This is the happiest rhythm dance on earth, and I am here for it every time. Fast music terrifies ice dancers, because it leaves them with nowhere to hide. Once you fall behind, you can’t catch back up. That’s what makes the midline step sequence in this program so impressive: it’s a race just to get it from one end of the rink to the other, and Makita and Gunara get there while maintaining their synchronization and looking like they’re having a blast. They sacrifice some clarity of edges and turns along the way, which is why it only came in at a level 2 this time. With both of their Junior Grand Prix events in the books – and two fourth-place results on their resume – this team has a couple of months to clean up. They could become an unstoppable force of joy in time for Nationals.
Loicia Demougeot & Theo Le Mercier (France), Free Dance
Carmen is unique among warhorses, because you can’t do a Carmen program without self-consciously doing a Carmen program. Some fans will accuse your program of staleness no matter how innovative your elements are; others will damn you with the faint praise of comparing you with their all-time favorite Carmen of yore. Instead of telling the opera’s story literally, Demougeot and Le Mercier take an impressionistic approach, hitting the music’s most familiar checkpoints with technical elements that play with sound, tempo, and emotion. They’re not the first team to do so, nor completely successful, but when it works – especially in the second half – the program feels engaging and fresh, like they’ve made it their own. Unfortunately, the technical elements that engage most with the music, such as their one-foot step sequence, are also the ones where they’re losing levels, a reminder that a sophisticated artistic concept adds a layer of difficulty that’s a lot to ask from a junior team. It’s impressive that they get so close to carrying this off.
Ondrej Nepela Trophy
Betina Popova & Sergei Mozgov (Russia), Rhythm Dance
I had planned to host a running “Bowles-off” throughout the season, comparing the many and varied attempts at Cabaret in the rhythm dance. I have canceled this competition, because Popova and Mozgov have won before some others have entered. They understand their music and their characters perfectly, with every beat of movement looking like stage-ready choreography. Their performance even draws out some of the source material’s subtler themes, such as the analogy between German cabaret culture and punk culture that started to be drawn in the Broadway revivals of the ’80s. On the technical side, some of the precision in their steps is taking a backseat to performance quality, but those twizzles are golden. He slid on his edge a little, which lost them a level, but those are some difficult skating leg positions, not to mention mid-turn changes of free leg position. This program is everything I want from ice dance, plus visible tattoos and thigh-high stockings.
Victoria Sinitsina & Nikita Katsalapov (Russia), Free Dance
Thank goodness the fad for generic lyrical programs has ebbed, because there’s more space this season for a beautiful program like this one to stand out. Katsalapov doesn’t always perform it beautifully, at least not yet – his aggressive and athletic style sometimes becomes bigger than the music, especially in his twizzles and lifts. Sinitsina, on the other hand, has never looked more at home on the ice. The highlight of the program is their choreographic step sequence, which seems designed to show off the depth of their edges and their ability to wind gracefully around one another while maintaining control of difficult turns. For a team trying to prove that their 2019 Worlds medal was a good start rather than a fluke, simplicity is a smart move: they have nowhere to hide in this program, and their best qualities shine as a result.
Lorraine McNamara & Quinn Carpenter
It’s time for me to give up harping on how McNamara and Carpenter’s junior-level programs were more creative and stylistically distinct. But this blog is where I lodge all my formal skating complaints, so consider my grievances logged and filed. This program is interesting mostly because this team remains interesting, with presence and chemistry that reflect their almost lifelong partnership. The program’s narrative, about mutual support and endless possibilities, reflects their emotional dynamic, and might bring greater impact as they grow more comfortable telling a personal story on the ice. For now, I’ll just groove to a one-foot step sequence and twizzles so expansive that the rink seems too small for them.
Next on The Finer Sports: more ice dance coverage and my preseason New Faves Hall of Fame. Probably.
One thought on “Semi-Recent Developments in Ice Dance”