Helene

Not to leave out the Frame brothers, Pa and Pe.

The first day of competition is complete. Spoilers follow. In the Men's SP, Jeffrey Buttle leads by over three points, but second place Jeremy Abbott, recently 4th at US Nationals after a weak Short Program, is a surprise, and he has the highest technical score by a sliver. Ryan Bradley, the US silver medallist, is in third, slightly ahead of Evan Lysacek, another surprising result. (Lysacek is 10.68 points off of the lead.) Emmanuel Sandhu had a disappointing skate and is in 4th place, followed by China's Jianliang Wu, who is only 1.46 points behind Sandhu, despite scoring 6.73 less in component scores. (Sandhu will have a greater advantage in the Long Program, where the PCS are multiplied by 2.) Christopher Mabee, the Canadian silver medallist, is in a disappointing 8th. None of the top names for China or Japan are competing in Men's. In the Pairs SP, Shen/Zhao lead by over 3 points over Pang/Tong. (Olympic and Worlds silver medallists Zhang/Zhang are not in the competition.) Inoue/Baldwin and Marcoux/Buntin trail in 3rd and 4th. The young gold medallists from the US and Canada, Castille/Okolski and Dube/Davidson, are languishing in 7th and 8th, about 15 points off the lead, and are behind the US and Canadian bronze medallists. In the Compulsory Dance, like at Europeans, the Golden Waltz, Dubreuil/Lauzon lead Belbin/Agosto by .82. Two more teams coached by Igor Shpilband, Davis/White of the US and Virtue/Moir of Canada, are about 5 points behind, within .27 of each other, with the 4th place US and Canadian teams about four points behind them.

Then there was a post 1984 competition, I think 1992, because Klimova/Ponomorenko were top competitors, and I didn't see US coverage in 1988. Scott Hamilton was commentating for CBS, and the CD that year was the Polka. There was a montage in which Hamilton made fun of the ice dancers, and for that I've never forgiven him.

I'm probably being dense, but I can't find a Japanese section. (My browser is Firefox, if that makes a difference.)

I love the Latin American skaters -- the two young women from Mexico had more presentation skills in their fingers than many of the higher ranked skaters both at 4C's and at Europeans, but because until very recently they had no triple jumps, they would get 4.X's under 6.0/OBO or 4's in PCS under CoP. Bogus. In order to increase participation in 4C's, the ISU has allowed each nation to send up to three skaters in each discipline, instead of having to qualify, like at Worlds and Europeans. At those competitions, the number of participants is determined by the placements in the prior competition: One participant: In 1st or 2nd earns three places for the next year In 3rd-10th earns two places for the next year Lower than 10th earns one place for the next year. Two or three participants: Top two placements are 13 or less earns three places for the next year Two top placements are 28 or great earns two places for the next year Two two placements are 29th or more earns one place for the next year. For places 1-16, the actual placement is calculated. For the 24 that make the LP, no one earns more than 16 points (earning points is negative in this case.) In the past, when there were qualification rounds, those who didn't make it out of qualis got 20 points and those who qualified for the SP, but not the long, got 18 points. This works the same way for dance, where there are still three rounds: those in the Compulsory Dance who don't make the Original Dance get 20 points, and those in the OD round but don't make the Free Dance get 18 points. Anyone who makes the Free Dance (top 24) gets a maxium of 16 points. It is very difficult for countries to earn additional places, and while it is still difficult to retain three places -- 13 points means a 1st and a 12th, a 5th or 7th, a 4th and 9th, etc., which is not easily done except among the strongest nations -- it is still difficult to earn two from one, but it is relatively easy to retain two -- the max of 16 points means if one person is the last qualifier, the other person needs to be top 12 -- unless there are only two bottom level teams after the retirement of a top one, like what will happen with Lithuania dance for next year's Euros. The highest skaters for Mexico at 4C's last year were Michelle Cantu (16th) and Ana Cecilia Cantu (18th). If the Euros/Worlds qualification rules were applied, there would be one place for the Mexican women in Colorado Springs this year. Yay for Ms. Parekh. Tugba Karademir from Turkey started with a 2A in 2003 in Malmo, and was 10th at this year's Europeans.

I'm not sure what year it was, but one of the intermission features at ISU championships contains clips of skaters shoveling the snow off the ice before they could skate outdoors.

There was a young woman from India who competed in an ISU event over the past year. I'm not sure whether it was a Junior Grand Prix or one of the second-tier international competitions like Ondrej Nepala, but she has been described as being at the level of a good recreational skater who had started private lessons. She earned around 5 points for her SP and less than 10 points in her Long Program, apparently completing few elements; by comparison, the lowest score in the SP at Europeans was 23.97 and for the LP was 61.52. I hope Ms. Parekh has a good showing in Colorado Springs.

This past weekend I saw two performances of Divertimento No. 15 in San Francisco, and probably because of the recent tribute to Hayden by d'Amboise, I thought a lot about her during the performances, and I judged the dancers by whether they conveyed any trace of Balanchine's snapshot of Hayden in their interpretations.

I've seen one ballet by Possokhov, the revision of Firebird that San Francisco Ballet danced this weekend. (The original version was made for Oregon Ballet Theatre.) There was nothing uber-dramatic about it. He has a unique sensibility and approach, and a wonderful sense of humor and theatricality. His response to the music and drama was different than Folkine's, and in a fundamental way, heretical: in the Berceuse, not only does the Prince have to decide between the Princess and Firebird -- he has a wonderfully compact quick mime, first hands to heard, but then a gesture to say, "which one?" tha sums it up quickly and without melodrama -- but the Firebird is sad to lose him. That the Princess and her retinue are on pointe diminishes the supernatural quality of Firebird as well. But nonetheless I still found the entire scene touching, however inauthentic to the story. Apart from the long orchestral passage in which the monsters stomp about, I thought his general approach to them as an organic mass was as fantastic and convincing as I've ever seen. My favorite part of the ballet though, is the ending, in which instead of a grand pagent, the entire stage is filled with a wonderfully energetic Russian folk-like dance that is a vortex of joy. While I didn't look at the Prince's role, for example, and think that he was choreographing for himself, I think there is a lot of Possokhov's overall dance sensibility in the piece. I loved his dancing, and I was very happy to see this generalized in his choreography. There's an imagination in Possokhov's work that is beyond anything I've seen from Lubovitch, with the possible exception of his Sleeping Beauty for ice skating, which stretched him.

I think you have to be registered on BT4D to read it. Here's the post from Mel Johnson: If there is more published information, members are invited to link to them. It is also appropriate for members to write their own tributes to Mr. Irwin in this thread. Thank you. Well done, good and faithful servant; May you have eternal rest, May light eternal shine upon you.

leonid has very kindly agreed to become Foreign Correspondent for Great Britain.

Friday, 2 February-Program 1 Lesson #1: Never go to see a ballet set to accordian music when you are jet-lagged. From what I saw of Aunis, the ballet that followed Divertimento No. 15 in the first half of the program, three men -- Garrett Anderson, Rory Hohenstein, and James Sofranko -- described as "working class" in the program and dressed identically, dance together and in canon to traditional Atlantic Coast music by Maurice Pacher. According to the program notes, "Since the men dance identical movement in canon form, their personal interpretations of their roles is key." Apart from a bit of writhing on the floor in the opening and closing of the ballet, there was little movement to suggest the vast range of strains in the music, from Irish-sounding lilts to what became American folk music to identifiably French country music. For me, the only really compelling piece of the choreography was in the middle, when the three men in succession, melted from a standing position straight down to an almost kneeling one. I'm hoping this work looks better when I've had a little more sleep. Divertimento No. 15 opened the program, and, sadly, the orchestral problems noted in today's reviews of Opening Night were not fixed by last night's performance. However, during the double string -- violin and viola -- cadenza, I had just been thinking that it was being performed with more clarity than I remembered hearing in the past, when one of the two went out of tune momentarily. (Kind of like when Dick Button notes that a skater is going strong, which by definition dooms him/her to a fall within seconds.) I was sitting in the Balcony Circle, and I will never do this again when this ballet is programmed: it is too steep an angle for the dancing to breathe. From my perch, the corps seemed a bit eager to jump out of the gate with full energy -- I've noticed this in PNB performances, too, because these are special roles for the dancers, not the eighth ballet in four days -- and I think the ballet needs a little more champagne sparkle and elegance. (Better overeagerness than watch-glancing, though.) However, after what seemed like a tight set of variations, with the exception of Frances Chung in Hayden's role and Tina LeBlanc in Wilde's -- she danced with a softness that I rarely seen in this role -- the eight corps members were truly the stars in the Minuet, which they danced with expansiveness. Maureen Choi was a standout among them. The Principals rode the wave, more or less, in the Andante section. Again Frances Chung was a standout; except for one minor miscalculation, it was a masterful performance of legato and line. It was wonderful to see a tall, long-legged dancer, Rachel Viselli, in Diana Adams' role: while shorter or more evenly proportioned dancers have danced it superbly, it's wonderful to see more of Balanchine's original conception. Watching Vanessa Zahorian in Leclerq's role made it clear what a wonderful time Balanchine must have been having with Leclerq's quirky style. Among the men, Ruben Martin gave the most satisfying performance, one of elegance and ease. Davit Karapetyan, the Principal man, was a bit square, and Hansuke Yamamoto danced his theme variations a bit too much in competition mode, which didn't fit the schema. By the Finale, the performance had jelled to a rousing ending. The second half of the program was William Forsythe's Artifact Suite. I had seen the first part, set to Bach and a crashing fire curtain with Pacific Northwest Ballet, but I had never seen the second. Unlike the hooded creature in the PNB version, the Single Female Figure, Elana Altman, in a plain leotard, appeared more active, and in the second part, she has a prominent role. According to the program, in Part I there were men partnering Muriel Maffre and Lorena Feijoo -- Pierre-Francois Vilanoba and Pascal Molat -- and I was vaguely aware of two men in goldish body suits, but the ballet belonged to the women. It was rending to tear my eye's from one to concentrate on the other, each dancing with super-human energy and focus. There's a certain narrative happening in Part 1, about individualism and absorbtion into the collective, and I suppose Part 2 indicates that this process produces ballet dancers. But what ballet dancers: set to music by Eva Crossman-Hecht, who at her best sounds like Shostakovich and at her worst sounds like a George Winston version of Phillip Glass, they did extended phrases of movement and gesture of remarkable beauty. A love song to ballet from Forsythe, perhaps?

Injury prevents that from happening Ms. Imler's injury was confirmed in this review of the production. I hope she recovers soon. Her 2003 performance was one of the highlights of the run for me.

Both tickets are gone.

I have to admit to enjoying The Other Side of Midnight, too. Sometimes we need to have trashy guilty pleasures, no? I loved The Other Side of Midnight. I refuse to feel guilty, unless I'm laughing uncontrollably about something in really poor taste (like the film Raumschiff Surprise).

Amy, I apologize. I didn't realize until I was in Warsaw with my work computer (with IE 7) tried to do Links last Saturday, that 99.9% of the time I never use the button itself -- I just type in the syntax. I didn't even realize that this was ingrained behavior, until the .1% time I tried to use the button, and I got the error message. I've used search in the provider's help forum on "IE 7" and "Internet Explorer 7" and "I.E. 7" to get a status, and I couldn't find anything in the "bugs" thread for this issue. However, it's impossible that no one has raised this, and I'm going to file a support ticket.

I mistakenly ordered a single ticket for the Friday, 9th February performance of Swan Lake, and then ordered three tickets to the same performance for me and two friends. It's Patricia Barkers second performance of the run and last Swan Lake. The ticket is about halfway back in the orchestra, in the right section facing the stage, about six seats in from center. I also have my regular subscription ticket to this Saturday, 3 Feb matinee with Kaori Nakamura that I'm going to miss. It's about 2/3 of the way up Gallery Upper on the left side, the second seat closest to the stage. If anyone can use either or both, I'd be happy to give them to you, first PM'ed, first served. (I won't be able to respond until after 1pm.)

I ordered tickets last week and guessed wrong Not that seeing Körbes twice is any reason to be sad, but I ordered tickets to two evenings and both second weekend matinees in the hopes that Lesley Rausch might be given a matinee Odette/Odile, and by doing so, am going to miss Kaori Nakamura I'm very glad to see that Zimmerman and Johnson, two dancers I'm always happy to see in featured roles, are going to dance the pas de trois with Anton Pankevitch, along with the other trios who've been given more prominence.

He'll be back

The last time he played Seattle, he brought, Uccello, a cello ensemble that includes him and his students from McGill University. It was a fantastic night of music.

Dick Button won and Barbara Ann Scott won the European Championships in 1948, when the competition was still an open championship, but immediately afterwards, it became closed. Israel was added to the list of countries eligible for Euros in 1997, which was two years before the Four Continents Championships for skaters from the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and Asia was founded. Former Soviet SSR's, like Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Ukraine are included in the European Championships, although, for whatever reason, Uzbekistan competes at Four Continents. Many of the Israeli skaters were originally from the Soviet Union or Russia -- ex: Schmerkin, Chait/Sakhnovsky, the Zaretskis, Kotov -- and the infamous "toe-tapping" judge Alfred Korytek, formerly a Ukranian judge, is now a judge for Israel. Tugba Karademir is a very lovely skater, but is on the slow side. But there's slow and slow: many skaters who are slow can't maintain edge speed and die out, but she maintains her speed and has nice flow from element to element. She has first-class positions in her spins and spirals with great extension and toe-point. She landed enough jumps today, and she was 8th in the Long Program. Having seen her in Malmo in 2003, with the same lovely spins and spirals, I never would have expected her to finish above Elene Gedevanishvili or Julia Sebestyen in a long program, ever. The day started out slowly. In the first group, only Jenna McCorkell showed any spark, although it did look like her body suit and fiance Kevin Van der Perren's body suit from last night were made from the same supply of spandex and sequins, and not in a good way. Her technical score was in the top ten. When after two skaters in the second group, the friend next to me said "17 more to go," I would have yelled if I hadn't been stunned by the thought of sheer boredom, although I had liked the young Ukranian skater, Irina Movchan, who has the semblance of power and has potential. Lina Johansson is a nice skater, but she's still coming back after a year of injuries. Idora Hegel, who wore a beautiful dress, had a weak skate, and luckily for us, Karademir ended the first half with her quite good skate. Alisa Drei opened the second half, and skated a very nice, smooth performance to Richard Addinsell's Warsaw Concerto. (That was like bringing Turandot to Worlds held in Beijing.) She always seems to be fighting for the last place on the Finnish team, and has skated quite well at Euros in the past, but generally not good enough to secure a spot on the World team. (In 2006, after Susanna Poykio earned a second spot for Finnish women the year before in Moscow, the Finns could, finally, send a second woman to Worlds and Olympics.) Elena Glebova and Tamar Katz didn't live up to the potential they showed in the Short Program, but I rather liked Glebova's straightforward style, and she was the only woman to attempt two triple/triple combinations, and at least one was rather late in the program. She's a name to remember for the future. Elena Sokolova showed up to skate, and I expected much higher scores, but her levels and grades of execution must have been low, because she had only the eighth highest technical score -- lower than Karademir, who doesn't have a triple Lutz, and who I don't think landed a triple Flip -- and barely a point higher than Jenna McCorkell. The big surprise of the penultimate group was Italian Valentina Marchei. She upset an injured Carolina Kostner at 2004 Italian Nationals; she started as a shortist, powerhouse, and then faded after a promising debut in Budapest, where she had placed 15th in her first European Championships. She has matured, and her style is more subtle. She landed most of her jumps, and came in a surprise 3rd in the Long Program, 5th overall, and one of only three skaters to crack 50 points in the technical score. (As a member of the top five, she will skate in tomorrow's gala. I hope she has a program ready ) Wearing an unusual dress of shimmery, taffeta-like light green and silver fabric that, with a little alteration, could appear on the runway in a couture show -- she designed it herself -- Susanna Poykio, whose blades cannot be heard over the quietest music, popped a combination, doubled at least one of her attempted triples, and faded a bit towards the end of her program to the film score from Munich. She had many lovely elements, although the Biellmann position is a self-defeating one for her, since it slows her down. I was so hoping she'd be on the podium, but the missing element in the Short Program was her undoing. Sebestyen, who showed so much promise for a comeback in her Short Program, started off the final group, and may have landed only one triple in her program. She popped, performed doubles, and had the same jump problems she experienced earlier in the Grand Prix season. She used to have the best triple lutzes and triple flips in the Ladies' field. Carolina Kostner took the ice in a magenta dress with a feathered skirt, and skated a program to the soundtrack from Memories of a Geisha. She was solid in warmup, landing a very easy 3/3/2 combination. She repeated in the actual program itself, and she did some fabulous elements, including a 3Loop (or perhaps Salchow) with an approach from the opposite rotation. One spin was a little slow, and she doubled what looked like a planned 3Loop combination, but her spiral step sequence floated across the ice, and her positions were terrific. She scored a personal best with this performance. She's back, and I'm thrilled for her, after carrying the weight as the poster child for the Torino Olympics on her shoulders. Wearing a chiffon-like babydoll dress in mint green, lovely Kiira Korpi skated right after Kostner, but, luckily, there were a large number of Finnish fans in the audience to fortify her. She has the looks and stature of Grace Kelly, and the charm and grace of Audrey Hepburn. (Twice during the Ladies' montage that played during ice resurfacing her face was shown when the lyrics were "She's a beautiful girl." And figure skating has no shortage of beautiful women.) Her skate wasn't perfect -- she had a few jump errors, and her last spin may have been off -- but much of it was very, very good, including blades nearly as soft as Poykio's, and she finished fourth in the free skate, edged out of third by .6, and was within .02 of matching Poykio's excellent component scores. Sarah Meier followed with a floaty program to the film score from Pride and Prejudice. It also wasn't a perfect skate -- she can do this program better, particularly with a little more oomph at the end -- and she didn't have the technical content to compete with a mostly clean Kostner. She is not that far behind though, and she earned higher compontent scores than Kostner. Now that gold and silver were pretty much decided -- Meier and Kostner had an almost six-point lead over Gedevanishvili after the short program, and even if she landed two triple/triples, that wouldn't have been enough to bridge the deficit on its own. Gedevanishvili is not a noted Long Program skater: even in Juniors, she rarely had a clean one. She also is behind on her training from having to uproot herself from her coach in Russia and a move to Connecticut. In a "Flamenco Fantasy" program she had mistake after mistake on her jump. with no triples/triples attempted. (Her technical score was 14th of 24 skaters, while her components scores were eighth highest, saving her from a fall lower than eighth, 1.27 points higher than Sebestyen.) She had many disappointed fans in the audience, who were cheering her on. Within the first two elements, it was clear that Korpi had won the bronze, to the delight of many Finnish fans in the audience. The young Russian Alexandra Ievleva closed the competition. and, sadly, it was a very weak skate. I can see glimpses of what people like so much about here Short Program, which I didn't see, but she's going to need to be a lot stronger to be competitive. Based on the results, for next year's Ladies competition at European Championships in Zagreb, Croatia: Switzerland earns three spots -- a gold or silver earns three spots if there is only one competitor from a country -- as did Italy, with two ladies in the top five, and Finland, with three women in the top six, an amazing achievement. Russia is down to two, and it will be interesting to see who besides Sokolova the Russian Federation will send to Worlds in Tokyo. Hungary retains two, and Georgia and Turkey earn two for the first time, based on lone competitors Gedevanishvili's and Karademir's placements. Tomorrow is the exhibition, which usually includes the local competitors. That should mean Anna Jurkiewicz, and Przemyslaw Domanski, each pf whom earned very respectable 20th place, and the second Polish pairs team, Piatkowska/Khromin. The top five from each discipline are scheduled to skate: 5th: Lutai, Marchei, Volosozhar/Morozov, Kerrs 4th: Davydov, Poykio, Obertas/Slavnov, Khoklova/Novitski 3rd: Van der Perren, Korpi, Siudeks, Denkova/Staviyski 2nd: Verner, Meier, Petrova/Tikhonov, Domnina/Shabalin 1st: Joubert, Kostner, Savchenko/Szolkowy, Delobel/Schoenfelder Such a wonderful group of skaters!

Today we got to the rink in time to see the last 13 Ladies in their short programs. 38 we couldn't face, and we had a nice leisurely lunch at a wonderful pierogi restaurant directly across from the Cathedral in the Old Town, before taking a leisurely taxi ride to Torwar, the arena. We'd been told by fellow members of the Figure Skating Universe board who were in attendance that the best performances up until that point were by Alexandra Ievleva, the Russian Nationals silver medallist, who is now in 6th place and will skate in the final group tomorrow afternoon, Israel's Tamar Katz, who is in 11th place, and Turkey's Tugba (pronounced like the instrument "tuba") Karademir, who has world-class spins and spirals, and about whom the consensus was that she was undermarked. (Or a handful of skaters who placed over her were overmarked.) The start order groups are based on the ISU rankings, which measure results in international competition over the last few years, and, with rare exception, we did see most of the skaters with the strongest results so far. However, the only clean performance I saw among 13 skaters was Sarah Meier's lovely one to not the usual, overused cuts from Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez. Carolina Kostner landed a beautiful 3Flip/3Toe combination after a shaky attempt in the warm-up, but then doubled the 3Lutz from steps, which is a required element. She has a horrible telegraph into her edge jumps, and in the past two seasons she's been pressing her arms stiffly against the side of her body on approach. As a result, there was a big gap between her steps and 3Lutz. I'm not sure why she changed from turning 3's into a 3Loop to the 3Lutz, which she has had a lot of trouble landing; the 3's into the Loop had been the finest among singles skaters in past four years. She could make up the point in difficulty in Grade of Execution. She is still fast and floats along the ice, and was the only Ladies' skater to earn 7's (4 of 5) in PCS. The doubled Lutz and the .8 factor on PCS in the Ladies' SP kept her in a virtual tie with Meier, who I think was underrated in PCS. The rest of the top 10, aside from Ievleva, was the best of the flawed. All had at least one missed or shaky (under-rotated, double-footed, tight, etc.) jump element, and Sokolova was downright weak. Sebestyen skated very well, but only did a double/double combination, which set her back a great deal. With rare exception, like Sebestyen's Serenade (Schubert) program, and Idora Hegel's blues, the choreography was generally weak. Meier's Arunjuez choreography was okay. To a program called "Two Guitars" (set to Russian folk music, I believe), Gedevanishvili opened with a strong 3Lutz, but then was tentative going into her combination. Her landing on the first jump was tight, and she was only able to tack on a low 2T to it. I'm not sure if it was a 3Flip or 3Toe; I'm sure it was meant to be a 3/3 combination. She linked three elements together: the spiral sequence to 2Axel to a great spin with clear positions, yet her transitions score was lower than Sokolova's, who had little more than crossovers. Her spiral was a fabulous supported side Y (almost an I) to back catch to an okay fire hydrant spiral. A couple of her spins were fast, but the positions were sloppy and a bit weak. Her straightline footwork was really superb, and the second half of the program was stronger than the first, which is promising. She has a lot of speed, but I don't think there's much air or breath in her movement quality, which lessens her impact as an interpreter, and makes her appear juniorish next to many of the seasoned skaters. Idora Hegel, wearing a gorgeous costume of illusion fabric on top, decorated with pale sequins in garden colors and black pants, skated to Blues for Klook. With the exception of jumps, where there's little room for interpretation unless there's a "ta da" overhead arm movement that would have been inappropriate here, each of the other five elements matched the music perfectly. We know she double-footed her solo triple jump, but that shouldn't be as large a deduction as doubling or popping, and she may have underrotated the first jump in her combination. But she skated all of the other elements very, very well and in character. Then she was saddled with scores in the 5's for each component score, including choreography and interpretation components, while Sokolova skated a lackluster, empty program to an elevator music version of "Nessun Dorma" and received scores mostly in the 6's. (But I'm not bitter, no I'm not bitter.) I can't say I'm really looking forward to the Ladies' Long Program tomorrow, but I hope to be suprised in a good way. Only 24 Ladies qualify for the Long Program. The start order in the final flight is Sebestyen (4th), Kostner (2nd), Korpi (5th), Meier (1st), Gedevanishvili (3rd), and Ievleva (6th). Sadly, in the Ice Dance competition, Attila Elek suffered a broken ankle in practice, having caught his blade in a rut according to the ISU press conference, and he and Nora Hoffmann had to withdraw. (He was in the arena, in a rather large cast, and on crutches.) On the whole, the competition started out strong, with seven of the first 18 scoring personal bests, and in some cases, decimating their old score by 15-25%. My new favorite young European team, Estonia's Gruenberg and Rand, scored 71.23 in the Free Dance, with a lovely, dancy, old-school, waltzy program to Kalmann's Silva, and this score stood up through ten skates. There were some charming programs among the first nine teams; only in the middle ranks was there sturm and drang and some more sturm. Nelli Zhiganshina, who skates with Alxender Gazsi for Germany, continued to impress with very elegant lines. In the middle to middle-top ranks, the teams generally have to choose between two styles: melodramatic and open, and thus easier, or more difficulty with less flow and drama. I'm not a fan of "Ice Theater" and there were a number of teams who chose the uber-drama route, and I'll never quite understand why they are so well-rated, especially in the component scores. Alla Beknazarova and Vladimir Zuev achieved a personal best with a 15th-ranked program to flamenco music that put me in a trance, and their fellow Ukranians, Anna Zadorozhniuk/Sergei Verbillo did a Morozov program to Cirque du Soleil's Dralion that I'm tempted to download in case I ever suffer from insomnia. The highlight of the middle group was Russia's Ekaterina Rubleva/Ivan Shefer. I was impressed with two young teams, Platanova/Maximishin and Mikhailova/Sergeev at Skate Canada, but it was clear in seconds why Rubleva/Shefer won the bronze at Russian Nationals: they skated with a combination of nice speed, flow, expression, and finish. Their program was most unusual: it was called "Aria of the Black Swan." It opened with an orchestra version of the big sweeping theme from the end of Act II of Swan Lake, with a rhythm box "oom-pah" underneath to give it "dance rhythm" according to the rules, but it then morphed into a Celine Dione-like Russian version with lyrics. It certainly wasn't trying to be ballet, but it captured the essence of the music. With the exception of Kristin Fraser and Igor Lukanin's Carribean Guitar piece, an uber-drama attempting playfullness, the last two groups really picked up. Sinead and John Kerr performed a routine to the Last of The Mohicans soundtrack. Much was made of Maxim Shabalin's fur-trimmed costume for Domnina/Shabalin's Polovetsian Dances program, complete with small animals he had presumably killed, but that was at least program-appropriate. I'm not sure what John Kerr's costume designer was thinking, but he was dressed with pelts that looked more like some fantasy version of some forest in 14th century middle Europe than the American frontier. There wasn't a single dance rhythm for the first minute and a half of their program, because it was set to a rather generic American adventure film score. I like to see dance with my dance. They have a lot of difficulty packed into their program, but I find them erratic and sloppy, especially Sinead Kerr. It's nothing that can't be fixed -- they train with Evgeny Platov, one of the greatest ever -- but it needs to be fixed. The French #3 team, Pernelle Carron/Mathieu Jost, did a less difficult program set to Edith Piaf songs, but it had air, and romance, and a light touch, and was simply delightful. The young Italians, Anna Cappellini/Luca Lanotte, just up from Juniors this year, skated a light and charming program to several vocal versions of I Got Rhythm. Sadly, after a valiant attempt to stay on his feet, Lanotte fell in the middle of the straightline footwork series, and the judges seems to have decided that they are too juniorish to be taken quite so seriously this time around. Sadly the fall lost them four points and put them behind Fraser/Lukanin in 8th place, which means the Italians will only have two teams instead of three, because the top Italian team, Faiella/Scali, who were the last couple to skate, fell during a reverse balance lift, where she "lifts" him. (It looked like a pretty nasty fall, too.) That cost them at least 5th place, and a very good chance at 4th. The driving techno music that felt like an assault at Skate Canada, sounded much better tonight. The competition came down to the top three teams, who skated first, third, and fourth in the last group. Khoklova/Novitski skated second to a lovely arrangement of the Rodrigo Arunjuez concerto called "Arunjuez, Mon Amour" with great speed, flow, and connection. They were so easy to watch, it was a pleasure. Four minutes went by like a flash. In an unscientific survey, among the fans I spoke with for whom Domnina/Shabalin are not favorites, they like Khoklova/Novitski the most of the Russian dance teams. (The same for Denkova/Staviyski fans, because of Khoklova/Novitski's great speed and flow.) Of the top three, Isabel Delobel/Olivier Schoenfelder skated first, to The Untouchables soundtrack. Somehow, the choreographers found enough music in the score with a dance rhythm, although some of it was basic orchestral adagio. It was a Bonnie and Clyde story, where she is shot in the first third of the program, and then something metaphysical happens. They were powerful, with great edges and dramatic flair, using so much of their entire bodies in the dance, and forging a connection not through contorted facial expressions, but through body movement. The only flaw I could see was that their straightline footwork, after a great start, got bogged down a bit from the midpoint, which happened to almost all teams with any difficulty. But their score was more than ten points lower than their personal best, and they only led by about two points going into the free dance. After Khoklova/Novitski, Domnina/Shabalin skated to Prince Igor. I think this is the finest freeskate they've done since moving to Seniors, and they skated it with great smoothness; the only "pull and tug" moment was towards the end of the program. They are wonderful skaters, and I think they were better than Navka/Kostomarov at the same time in their partnership, because they are evenly matched, while Navka was much better than Kostomarov. Zhulin was wonderful at hiding Kostomarov's flaws and emphasizing his wife's best qualities. Gorshkov and Petukhov, Domnina/Shabalin's coach and choreographer, don't cut them a break anywhere, but challenge them constantly, which, in my opinion, makes their achievement that much greater. They won the Free Dance, again, by a good deal less than their personal best, but Delobel/Schoenfelder still led all three phases by a fraction. It was up to Denkova/Staviyski to make up a 5-point margin. After seeing their skate, which looked flawless to me and was skated faster and with more power end-to-end than either Delobel/Schoenfelder's or Domnina/Shabalin's, I was sure they had gained at least the .6 per Component that, when factored, would have put them in the lead. Their personal best was four points over what they'd need to capture the title. I can't say that it's a great program -- I found the musical cuts dull and undifferentiated -- and, I'm not a big fan of what I consider the uberdramatic gestures they do, mostly when they are at a stop -- I think their restrained Baroque Original Dance from 2003 is one of the greatest OD's I have ever seen -- but I couldn't imagine that Staviyski's nervous reaction in Kiss and Cry waiting for the scores wouldn't change to elation, because they did an excellent job with a tried-and-true type program. But both the technical and component scores were lower than the two teams ahead of them, and their final score was ten points off their personal best. The crowd was not happy, but did support the winners, at least in the arena. This event has a short live interview, in English, with the winners, with translations into Polish. The interviewer asked Delobel/Schoenfelder if the win was gratifying at the end of their career. As far as I know, they only said they'd take one year at a time, and have not announced retirement. (He turned 29 at the end of the fall, and she's 28, which is not old for dancers, who often compete until they are in their early 30's.) They looked quite shocked at his question, but said how happy they were to have won, and thanked the crowd for being so supportive. (There were two large groups who had travelled from France for the competition.) I am so thrilled for Delobel/Schoenfelder, who have so often come out on the short end of the judges' stick. I wish I spoke French, so that I could have joined the Delobel/Schoenfelder well-wishers, instead of the shocked and dismayed Denkova/Staviyski fans I left on their way to another bar.

I am in Warsaw, and I'm having a blast at this competition. And thank you for the US Nationals updates, Natalia! Today was the Dance Original Dance -- an entire afternoon of tangos. This morning, a few of us went on the tour of the Castle -- more like a city palace -- which was built by the last king of Poland, who abdicated in the 1790's, about a decade after Poland was partitioned. (He was responsible for the first Constitution outside of the US.) This meant missing the first two flights. While I would have liked to have seen the young Estonians, Grethe Gruenberg/Kristian Rand and the two young Lithanian teams, Nicolette Amie House/Aidas Reklys and Katherine Copley/Deividas Stagniunas, I'll at least get to see the first and last at tomorrow night's free dance. The OD wouldn't be so bad if the same music wasn't used over and over and over and over again. I can only listen to "Libertango" so many times. My favorite piece was "Tango" by Piazzola. (Kind of like saying "Waltz" by Johann Strauss, Jr. or "Lied" by Schubert.") The man wrote hundreds of songs. You'd think choreographers could pick more than the same three every single time. I thought I was easily satistfied: a team need only point their toes, bend their knees, and perform the actual dance specified. (Among the younger couples, Kamila Hajkova and Nelli Zhiganshina, the women from the young teams from Czecholovakia and Germany, did so exquisitely, and the young Swiss, Bergen and De Fazio had wonderful tango quality.) I actually have notes on the start order lists distributed at the arena: a checkmark means I need to find a tape of the program, and "T" means it actually was a tango, which some teams -- and some of the men -- seem to confuse with flamenco. The best original dance tango, in my opinion, were the French #3 team, Pernelle Carron/Mathieu Jost. (Team #2, Pechalat/Bourzat withdrew after she broke her hand.) To three excerpts from Maria de Buenos Aires, they translated tango to the ice. Very close behind were their training partners, the French #1 team of Isobel Delobel/Olivier Schoenfelder. The only flaw I saw in Delobel/Schoenfelder's program was a noticeable slowdown in their last footwork pass, which was unfortunate, but the first 2/3 of their program was dynamite. Oksana Domina/Maxim Shabalin danced a real tango, and they were very good. She was a little distant, and not in a "come win me" way, but he smoldered, and it was a very impressive performance. I don't know what happened to make Denkova/Staviyski fall three points behind the Russians and four points behind the French. She had a mini-stumble right after the straighline footwook sequence, but that would cost them a point a most. The protocols aren't up, so I can't check levels, but in performance quality, they were quite convincing in the tango. But I do think that Domnina/Shabalin will overtake Delobel/Schoenfelder because... I'm a very superstitious person, and I was rooting for Tomas Verner, who led after the SP, to win, while #2, Brian Joubert, did, so I fear a 1/2 swap in the Free Dance. Joubert much deserved his win. He was the only man to do a quad combination, and he landed a number of spectacular jumps, his spins were terrific, his footwork got the crowds roaring -- as if they needed an excuse -- and he gave a fine interpretation of a combination of Apolcolypta and a French version of a Romeo and Juliet score with great power and speed. Tomas Verner skated immediately afterwords, and he couldn't land all of his jumps, although he skated beautifully, with great speed and fine edges. It's the first major competition in which he skated in the final group, having just missed that group at last year's Euros, and he looked nervous during the warmup and while waiting for Joubert's scores. Joubert had a monster score -- his Long Program score was over 14 points above second-place Van der Perren's score -- and even though the ovation for Verner when his name was called was equal to Joubert's, I can't imagine that it wasn't a little bit overwhelming to hear the response for Joubert first. Sergei Davydov started off the last flight, and despite a few mistakes, I was hoping his score would hold. He actually had a slightly higher technical score than bronze medal winner Kevin Van der Perren, but Van der Perren's greater speed and power won the day on the component scores. I didn't love Van der Perren's All-Testosterone-All-The-Time-style program to the soundtrack of Pirates of the Caribbean, but he had very solid elements, including a wonderful quad toe. Davydov's program to excerpts from Don Quixote was more subtle and varied, and demanded greater interpretive powers, but he did not get credit for that in the choreography and interpretation scores. And Davydov lost the bronze medal by .07, which was a heartbreaker. Andrei Lutai skated to a loud, modern arrangement to The Four Seasons, and I don't think the music did him justice, but he was a joy to watch, with very expressive arms and a very flowing way on the ice, while at the same time skating dyamically. His blades were very quiet. I hope he gets to go to World Championships in Tokyo -- there's always the chance that they'll send him to Jr. Worlds instead -- and that he can improve his performances even more. The third-place member of the Russian Men's team, not ever expected to challenge Klimkin, Griazev, and Dobrin, he proved to be the strongest competitor among his teammates, and he deserves a berth. Berntsson made too many mistakes on his jumps, but his program was a delight, and despite the mistakes, one of the most wonderful of the night. The camera isn't kind to France's Alban Preaubert: he tends to look sloppy and erratic on TV. While I wouldn't say he has the best posture or polish, live, not much of that matters: he's got power, a quirky charisma, and a unique sensibility that provoked a smile so long that my face hurt afterwords. You can't buy that ability to engage and delight. But despite the wonderful skating by the top six, I think one of the best-choreographed Men's programs of all time was skated by Jamal Othman to Gotan Project's Lunatico. I'm not sure how much of the program is flattened by the camera, but this is modern dance translated into skating. He used every inch of his body to interpret the music, risking pulling off the axis by fully engaged arms and back. It is a stunning program. Just some random notes: * I haven't seen any of the practices, but tomorrow is the women's Short Program, and while we're not willing to sit through 38 programs in which the majority will be to tinkly piano music, if history repeats itself, we should get to the arena well before Elene Gedevanishvili skates. My little group is looking forward to seeing her program, which she'll be performing for the first time this year, after her mother was deported back to Georgia, and she moved the US to train with Galina Zmievskaya, Victor Petrenko's mother and Oksana Bauil's former coach. * The opening ceremony was very moving, and featured, on a carpet that covered about 25% of one end of the rink, a professional Polish folk dance company, which performed several polonaises and mazurkas. There were young (6-10) children skating, as well as teenaged skaters carrying the national flags of participating nations and performing weaving patterns at the same time. * It's a small arena, and the skaters are all over the place. After the short program where the young Polish skater Przemyslaw Domanski qualified for the LP -- as a member of the host nation, he would have skated in the long program anyway, but he earned his spot by finishing 24th, and he rose four places to end the competition in 20th place -- he signed autographs for almost an hour. He seemed genuinely delighted that people recognized him and wanted his autograph and to take pictures with him. Also after the short program Ukranian skater Anton Kovalevski took photos of a group of teenaged girls with Sergei Davydov, and a bunch of Russian girls had their picture taken holding flags of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Brian Joubert was mobbed, of course -- he's a rock star at these events. * My friends and I found what we thought was a quiet corner in which to eat our dinners between events, and we met a very nice couple from Great Britain, who camped out in the same corner. It turned out that we were just off the stairs that the skaters used to get to and from their small area on the top floor, where the post event press conferences were held. We got to see the entire parade of dance teams. Olivier Schoenfelder is so tall that I was able to spy him over the entire mob, and Isabel Delobel is even more beautiful in person, as is Albena Denkova, who along with Maxim Staviski, was surrounded by fans. The young Italian team also passed by: Anna Cappellini looks like she should be in school, and Luca Lanotte looks like almost all of the men in my high school class, except without the bad 70's haircuts. More tomorrow. (And Euros is in Croatia next year...)

This means Domingo will come full circle, because he started as a baritone.

I loved Alice when NBoC brought it to NYC on tour. I, too, hope CBC will release her televised broadcasts in her honor.