silver

I watched Davis & White's 2010 Olympics free dance, and it was a bit...well, disappointing.

I don't know, it's technically executed beautifully (and dramatically, too; I loved the transitions from the quieter music to the clashing louder one). They're always so very fluid - here's the original dance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUzchzkitdQ - but it's just not quite...I can't come up with a better way to say it, because everything is technically so beautifully executed. I love watching them do the movements. But it's not musical, I guess; it's not so much dance as execution, and sometimes - arm movements aside - it looks like they're going through movements. Some of the musical transitions seem to catch them by surprise, or they don't quite pick up on some of the nuances, but perhaps that's just choreography. I guess I like the dance part the best; Davis and White came in second place in the Vancouver Olympics to Virtue and Moir, who had a magical, absolutely magical free dance:


But what I was going to say, before all the movies came up, was that Virtue & Moir have a new free dance, based on Carmen.

Watch the coordination! From 1:42-154 or so, omg. And the last, oh, I don't know, fifteen or twenty seconds is just sdkfl;j, I love their skating.

I mean, look at Baiul jitterbug dancing with Petrenko (singles skater)! I think I grinned throughout the entire dance (and the clothing is priceless too):

She won the 1994 Olympics (as a singles figure skater, not as an ice dancing partner) with a Swan Lake that was more like ballet on ice than anything else [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bH0CAPzef8] but she's so versatile - I'm not the biggest fan of ballet, but I love that she can do so many styles.

The figure-skating and ice dance are Olympic sports, and yeah, the skaters are absolutely amazing to watch. The only thing is, they and their routines have never stuck in my mind quite as clearly as an amateur skater.

I doubt that girl was more than fourteen; dressed in the bulkiness of January-cold-snap-parkas and a silly woolen hat, she was in the middle of one of those awful community outdoor skating rinks. The ones that people spray in the middle of a field with water, and don't use the zamboni--they just push the snow off with shovels, and leave you to deal with the crevasses. It was the winter festival thing, and there were skaters of all ages--little boys with their tiny hockey skates pushing chairs to keep their balance, their fathers skating calmly backwards and keeping an eye on them, people between the ages of six and sixty, going around and around the oval.

I think she was practicing a waltz jump. It was obvious she hadn't much practice; there wasn't the liquid movement that repeated practices makes. But what struck me was that though her jump wasn't perfect, wasn't wrapped-and-tied-up-in-a-pretty-bow, it was real and I could see that she'd get it eventually. Even though there was a clear hesitation in her movements, you could also see the grace in the jump. Perfection can be dulling. But that jump she kept practicing, again and again, began to show that elegance that's so cherished in skating.