Papadakis / Cizeron free dance. I want to say zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz because IMO, it is, but that's not really a credible critique. What is a valid critique is the fact that their "lifts" in this thing are rated L4. Talk about rigging the game.

The skating is open, the holds are one sided - one of them hanging onto the other's shoulder or forearm, and the skating is slow. Unison is apparently not a priority. But at least this choreography and music has the climactic ending some think VM's fd lacks.

Oh wait.

Crossing fingers and every appendage I have, I do think the 2018 gold is VM's pretty much as the gold was DW's in 2014, come what may, unless one member of the team missteps, egregiously, in a way visible to the average viewer. That said, Moonlight Sonata, as choreographed here, does not accomplish very much in the way of a conventional P/C emo narrative that appeals to their most invested fans. It will be such a miscarriage of justice not only if P/C stand atop the podium, but if they're second. There is no way emotion and sensation can sweep aside skating considerations with this program enough to get away with defeating the Shibs, Hubbell Donohoe, and quite a few more. Just imagine if Alexandra Paul and Mitch Islam had presented this program at any point during the period of their careers when it seemed they had a shot to break though to the top five. This would have been dismissed as weak, dull, inferior skating skills, lacking impact - the entire mash-up that passes for evaluating a competitive figure skating program. I'm retroactively offended on Paul Islam's behalf. This program is every damning with faint praise Paul Islam's critics (including their own Fed) claimed Paul Islam was, only P/C are actually all those things.

P.S. - as to multidirectional skating, there isn't any. Not even the fake-out kind.

P.P.S. - When Marie France talked about P/C's rise from a 15th place team one year to world champions the next, she talked about their programs and packaging. I just find that a contemptible aspect of the sport. Anyone, even the shittiest team, can deserve to be world champion if they find the right "package". The job is done in the music selection and program layout and choreography. If that's true -  most people who comment on the sport speak as if it is - then how is it a sport? Why is it when a insta-rise like this one occurs, nobody says - they improved their speed? They acquired more powerful run of blade? Or anything having to do with skating skills? No, somehow the judges in the sport are so incompetent that world class skill - which, it seems, everyone possesses - can be completely hidden from them by the wrong program, and they only have a lightbulb moment when the correct formula is hit upon to showcase the dance team in question.

P,P.S. For an element to be legit L4, in my opinion there should be no way to hack it so that somebody who just started Canskate might be able to do it. There should be no way that a lift is L4 with the guy skating in one line on two feet while the woman dropping from kneeling on his chest (and clutching him w/both hands), to kneeling on his stomach qualifies for the change of position feature.

Tessa

Scott remains brilliant, but it's hard to remember back in the day when some fans thought he was the genius and she was the technician. He's wonderful, and I try very hard to watch him and just him in this free dance, but I keep going to her. The layers of detail in what she's doing, and HOW she's doing it, are breathtaking. He has gorgeous run of blade, his shoulders are more relaxed than they've ever been, but it's Tessa who is framing these programs. She has the in the bone understanding and he is her foil - in performance, not in skating. Performance includes not just the acting, but the intention behind every isolation, every beat, every transition.

Direction changes, hold changes. Not
advertising it. How many fans even notice?
And the blade run, the speed.

They switch sides during the twizzles. I don't think people notice 1/4 of what VM do, because they refuse to advertise - meaning, refuse to cue the audience. Heads up, this is hard. And what they do actually is difficult, compared to other teams who look for something "effective" that is actually made easier by the required feature.


This what Latin dance looks like.

y.

One fan on a skate board claimed they lost the latin character
here.

SD Practice

I don't believe Marie-France had anything to do with either of VM's programs.

I love that both programs are flashy.

Putting this here for later.

The skating part of this gorgeous skating aside, Tessa's body articulation is extraordinary. Also, how little they need to do to effect transitions into lifts and out of them. I wonder if they'll be made to fuss it up /unnecessarily b.s. to disguise their extraordinary mastery of the mechanics, and I wonder if people who don't know what they're looking at will think how Virtue and Moir are doing things here is basic. Good luck any male ice dancer in the world besides Scott assisting his partner into a rotational lift with what looks like a flick of the wrist.

Oh look, voluntarily using some Latin in their
fd. And here I'd understood from a pair of two-time
world champions that Latin can't be skated even
as a pattern dance whose vocabulary has
existed in ice dance since time began.

Look at her.
Back when they did their
"reality" show, I dragged Tessa
pretty hard for coming across like a bot.
But the truth is, she's not human.
Think how impossible it is for
any other ice dancer to do what she does,
and then remember that in her spare time,
she's had kids.

Tessa's skating and quality of movement is mesmerizing in this free. As spectacular as she's always been, there's even more softness, fluidity, power, precision, seamlessness and flow in her skating and her movement. Even down to her hands and wrists when they're on Scott's neck as she changes position. And the quiet, the power, speed, accuracy and absolute perfect mechanics of the lifts so far - not a single fail safe.

Add caption

This is beautiful. A million ice
dancers have died on the ice with a sequence
of collapsing into their partner's arms,
but Tessa isn't collapsing. Her "character"
is. She's not.

Tension in Paradise

Belated remarks:

Papadakis & Cizeron haven't confirmed their music, but this interview in May* - written by someone in the style of a mythologizing syncophant - had lots of pre-emptive sour grapes:

Gabriella: Yeah, we like to skate very fast, sometimes not so much into the details, but more…)

Yeah, I feel you Gabriella. And actually, many of your fans believe ice dance should not be defined and quantified. I think a divinity is meant to descend and anoint Papadakis Cizeron with gold upon the conclusion of their free skate, a la Bernie Sanders' bird.

Both P&C and some of their fans were dragged mercilessly on the interview thread, deservedly, so that's some sort of progress. Maybe some day a plurality of fans on skating forums will decide that real skating skills and rhythm should determine a competition's outcome, versus program composition / music selection, and I'll faint dead away.

Gabriella: I’m not a big fan of Latin for skating. I love Latin dances, I love watching Latin dances, on the floor. But on the ice… I think it’s such a different dynamic in the body that cannot really be translated on the ice, so it’s always gonna look kind of… cheap…

Guillaume: Cliché…

Understood. They can't do it, so it's not worth doing. More ice dancers than this blog can name check have ably translated Latin dance to the ice.

Gabriella: Cheap and cliché, Latin dances on the ice. Plus, there are no much possible different choices for themes and musics. Latin music always kind of sounds the same for me, with the same kind of instruments, and rhythms and… Not like this season – you could’ve had the 20ties, the 30ties, the 40ties, the 60ties, rock ’n’ roll, hip-hop, there was so many difference choices you could have! Latin music? Iiiih, not so many! [she makes a squeaking sound, and then starts laughing]. So it’s hard to be original on these things.

That's a whole lot of ignorance in one paragraph.

Guillaume: The thing about the free dance is that you get to really ice dance, and not dance on the ice. You know what I mean? And the short dance is more about dancing on the ice. All those ballroom positions don’t really fit to the ice, to the material that we have. I think it’s always gonna be a struggle, because we are ice dancers, we’re not ballroom dancers.

And for me the short dance kind of feels like Dancing with the stars. You pick skaters, and you try to make them ballroom dancers, but it’s never gonna… Like if you wanna see Latin dance, go watch a ballroom… ball, you know? [laughing] So I think it always kind of looks cheap.

And that's a whole lot of mumbo jumbo bullshit. That's freedom defined as liberation from any sort of technical standard, when anyone with a clue understands technique facilitates freedom. What does he think his particular skating discipline is about if not translating dance to the ice? Well, we all know. Skating whatever the fuck, however the fuck. He's absurd.

Anyway, it was the first time I have seen fans suggesting that P&C are full of themselves. In some respects, why shouldn't they be. They know it's not what their blades are doing that gets them on the podium, so they must have decided it's legit mystical, which is perfectly ok for a sanctioned Olympic sport.

There's a lot in the article about how movement in the ranks is more possible now, without ever mentioning the superior skating skills upon which rapid upward movement is meant to be based. It's all a big mystery, per P&C and the interviewer. The interviewer attempts to say they are admired by other skaters, but P&C mostly report how they've received messages from other skaters saying something like, "Shit, if you two can be world champions without anything in your skating or previous history suggesting it, it gives me and my partner hope! Maybe we, too, can be random but fortunate pawns in a double (Olympic) cycle, multiple-Fed-engineered, quid pro quo!"

Other stuff:

Remember this? Kind of a twist lift
at the end of Virtue & Moir's Olympic OD.
20 minutes before performing the OD 
at Worlds 2010, the vaporous figure 
skating grapevine somehow conveyed 
that this same maneuver might be illegal 
to perform at Worlds. Due to to it being 
possibly a kind of twist lift.

I remember Scott complaining about how he and Tessa try to push the envelope, but get pushback. I think he should have complained instead that he's in a recognized ISU discipline, yet a maneuver they executed at the Olympics mysteriously became possibly illegal for Worlds, but, you know, up to you. That's not how any legit sport functions.

Here it is, back. 
Say nothing else about Virtue and Moir, they like the long game. 
Astrologically speaking, they may be Taurus (Tessa)
and Virgo (Scott), but as a team it's pure Scorpio.

Iliushechina Moscovitch - quad sal at the Cricket Club.
Kirsten Moore-Towers is gnashing her teeth.

Moore-Towers wants to do a quad "yesterday." Maybe the above video was this team's only decent attempt in many tries, who knows, but it's a much better quality throw than Duhamel Radford's. They don't stop skating for half the rink before launch, it's an actual throw, not an assisted jump, and, while Lubov lands with a deep knee bend, it's not a crouch. Her carriage is open, and there's run of blade on her landing. Dylan's form at take-off is a mess - off the ice, lurching forward, and a mule kick, but the judges never seem to care what the guy does. Michael Marinaro certainly isn't going to show him up.

Even if Iliushechkina blows a jump, it didn't stop Sui Han from becoming world champions last season. Often as not, pairs results are determined by which error-strewn performance manages to grind out the most points.

Finally, Bryce Davison got married in June, an event I was skeptical would ever take place. Every photo I'd seen of the happy couple seemed awkward, IMO, and lacking conviction. There was a reserve, a stiffness. Then I read that his dearly beloved was a former skater, and I found this:

Michelle Moore prior to taking the ice for Canada in 2009.

That's one of the cutest things ever, and explains a lot.

BTW, her skating skills are excellent. Just not a strong jumper. Congratulations Bryce Davison.

P.S. Excerpt from Weaver & Poje's Beverly Smith interview:

They were gleeful when the International Skating Union announced that the rhythm in the short dance for Olympic season would be Latin. “We LOVE Latin,” Weaver said. “We love the dancing in the clubs. We loved our Latin program from 2011 to 2012. It’s one of our favourite genres and styles. So without repeating ourselves, we wanted to find a way to still be exciting and entertaining.”

*Excerpted on Goldenskate.com

Old School

Virtue & Moir | HPC 2017 FD Practice Moulin Rouge from ScottandTess on Vimeo.

At :33 there's an old school VM move - not spectacularly at blade level a la Carmen, but in the spirit of the original Goose pivot off Scott's knee, and the closing move of the 2010 od before 20 minutes prior to its presentation at Worlds, somebody decided it might be illegal.

Are Scott and Tessa going to hear through the grapevine that :33 is a throw? Nope. Canada got what it wanted out of 2014 - a World Champion out of Gadbois, and then last season VM "legitimized" the deal, in effect co-signing their own screw job.