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A Man's World

Men’s Figure Skating Competition
Winter Olympics
Palavela at Torino, Italy
February 14 and 16
Televised by NBC

by Susan Reiter
copyright ©2006 by Susan Reiter

 
In the end, fortunately, it wasn’t only about the jumps. During telecasts of men’s figure skating competitions in recent years, the “commentary” often has consisted mainly of announcers enumerating the various jumps—a triple lutz here, a quad toe loop there—or noting if the skater’s intended jump was taken down a notch in degree of difficulty at the final split second.

But my memory of the men’s gold medal-winners from recent Winter Olympics are of performances that boasted a strongly individual artistic profile—in addition to, of course, technical difficulty including jumps. Most memorable is Ilya Kulik’s buoyant, seemingly effortless embodiment of the robust, jazzy insouciance of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” in 1998.  Of course he landed numerous triple jumps, but what made them stand out was the elegant way he landed, with his free leg extended high and his line always impeccable. Alexei Yagudin, who won in 2002, had a more aggressive, athletic style, but along with his technically phenomenal jumps and explosive footwork, his long program generated excitement from his ability to inhabit the crisp, chilly staccato rhythms of Vivaldi’s “Winter” portion of “The Four Seasons.”

At the current Winter Olympics in Torino, the outcome of the men’s competition was a foregone conclusion, as far as who would win the gold. Evgevy Plushenko, the silver medalist in 2002 and winner of nearly every competition he has entered since then, has an amazing ability to land the most complex jumps and to perform them in a fluid, non-pushy manner. Unless inured, he rarely falters. He’s been on the international scene since he was 16, and for years his programs featured florid, often excessive arm movement that lacked any organic impetus. But his early extravagance was preferable to the formulaic, business-as-usual programs with which he won his gold medal. It was difficult to find anything identifiable as choreography. He punched out his jumps with the utmost efficiency and bided his time blandly in between. His music (excerpts from “Tosca” for his short program, a special violin arrangement of Nino Rota’s music from “The Godfather” for his long) served as background filler; his skating had little or no connection to it, and this musical deadness contributed to the programs’ weak impact. Aside from his impressive, cushiony jumps, there is nothing in his program that leaves an afterimage.

The NBC announcers—including the perceptive veteran analyst Dick Button; prominent skating choreographer Sandra Bezic and the1984 gold medalist, the ever-ebullient Scott Hamilton—rightly expressed their disappointment at the perfunctory manner in which Plushenko seized his long-awaited big moment. Even Hamilton, who in the past has announced each jump in a skater’s program with nearly over-the-top enthusiasm, as though nothing else mattered, ignoring all else, made it clear he felt what Plushenko did was underwhelming.

But if the big winner on this occasion offered little to make a case for the artistic and interpretive possibilities of the sport, there was much to celebrate on that front in some of the other performances by skaters who finished near the top of the rankings. The most exciting development, for those of us who hold John Curry and his exceptional line, musicality and fluidity as the gold standard for male skating: the Canadian skater Jeffrey Buttle made it to the podium, winning the bronze medal. He has been in the top echelon for a few years now, and always skates with deep musical sensitivity and consideration of the finer points of skating. His jumps are respectable, but he is not always able to land the most difficult ones. But he approaches skating with a dancer’s sensibility, using his edges in a highly refined manner, shaping his movements within each program so that they have a fluid continuity. His short program for this season, which I saw him skate flawlessly at an earlier competition, is so in sync with his well-chosen music—“Sing Sing Sing” by Louis Prima—that it becomes a dialogue with the music. It’s a section of Prima’s work that is in a state of constant anticipation, an interlude between the big brassy breakout of the full, famed tune. Buttle’s program (his choreographer is David Wilson) slyly, impudently slips within and around the pulsating, expectant music. His casual costume, his elegant yet jazzy bearing, his lightness on his feet—all of these give the program an improvisational tone, perfectly suited to the spontaneous jazzy score.

Unfortunately, Buttle was not at his best in the short program, taking a major fall and losing the momentum that is so crucial to this intelligently designed program. That left him in sixth place and looking despondent. But he poured all of his technical and interpretive skills into his long program, set to music from Saint-Saens opera “Samson and Delila.” Early on, his craved a wide arc in the ice while in a gorgeous spread eagle —a position I forever associate with Curry. It is nothing splashy, and doesn’t wow the crowd the way a jump does, but when executed with attention to line and phrasing— and placed intelligently within the music, as Buttle did—its beauty and poignancy are more satisfying than much of the busy flailing with which skaters try to impress the judges. Buttle’s program attained a level of refinement and contained passion—and he tossed in a large number of great jumps as well.

Scott Hamilton called Buttle a “skaters’ skater” during the Thursday broadcast, and the same phrase was used earlier when Matt Savoie, the third-ranked American at these Games, took the ice. He has a distracted poet’s air about him, and has not received the kind of media attention that the outspoken, fascinating but erratic Johnny Weir has garnered. This is all to the good—we only know Savoie through his skating, and both his short and long Olympic programs were eloquent and memorable. In the long, set to an assembled score including pieces by Ennio Morricone, he conveyed a restless wildness filtered through meditative serenity. His seamless program (choreographed by Tom Dickson) was full of the kind of “transitions” that Plushenko ignored. At one point, he sank into a simple lunge, just long enough for it to register. He slid into one of his jumps following a beautiful back spiral, for example. He offered us the full array of what skating is; the many possible ways a body can move across the ice. Savoie seems to let his skating happen, and he draws you into his programs. Many others turn the four-and-a-half minute long program into a disjointed succession of bits, so that they seem endless. Savoie’s program unspoiled in one calm, riveting flow.

The women will get their turn this coming Tuesday and Thursday, and it promises ot be a wide-open competition between veterans and neophytes. If you tune in, don’t count on NBC to identify who choreographed the programs; this information was only mentioned once, in passing, during the entire men’s competition. Their introductory graphic on each skater does not identify the music being used, either—something that ABC and ESPN, which broadcast al the other major competitions, have been doing.

Volume 4, No. 7
February 20, 2006
copyright ©2006 Susan Reiter
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