The Dance Hall 12: Boston Tea Dance Party

Rukia said:
I am curious what they think they'll get out of a move to iam.
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I assume the same things that Lopareva & Brissaud are working on. Longer, smoother stroking, in particular. More finish & more polish. Lifts that aren't eye sores. (And higher scores, of course).

Christina should be getting toward the end of that commute, I would hope. They have a little time, & for sure immigration timelines aren't super predictable; but she's now put in the time. And if there is a country of origin that would seem likely to come with fewer potholes, Canada would be it.
 
Now I really need the Euro dance centers to form a super alliance and US teams (not at IAM) need to join them. How do we get CPom and LaLa out?
 
Truly, I am as well right now.

I am very happy with the growth that Demougeot & Le Mercier and Tkachenko & Kiliakov had this season. And I loved Orihara & Pirinen's Chicago program.

But this has been my least favorite dance season in a long time. I'm not a fan of where the current rules are taking the sport. The unpredictability is gone. Too many of the athletes with that special "ice-dance" persona that zings out at me from moment one have split and/or gotten out without ever reaching their potential. And after all these years, waiting to see a new generation of teams climb up toward the medals, none of the teams currently being lined up for the podium have that zing for me. If the sport were still rewarding the technical details, I could at least respect that climb; but it's not. Scrapping the pattern doesn't convince me that teams who couldn't get it before are now really technically better. The balance just feels very off right now.

And I understand why. Because the balance right now feels so much better in the men's event than it did for years there after Vancouver. The plus 5 & negative 5 GOE makes such a difference in rewarding the guys who not only attempt difficulty but actually execute it well. It's great to see.

But it's so clear to me that the same scale is creating a lot of imbalance in dance, and I find it :wall: that the powers that be won't acknowledge that, even though it's so clear the potential movement in the discipline has been greatly hindered.
 
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Well, that's certainly a surprising development. I expected IAM next move would be to steal one of the Czech teams. Politically, it makes sense. It doesn't only give them the Georgian judge, but also other judges who have scored D/S rather favorably, like the Hungarian judges. That's at least my theory :p
 
marbri said:
Mind you they had a stronger stable when that happened and I don't expect to see some of their stronger teams return or P/C to come back.
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While IAM is currently down to one team on the World podium from the default of two in prior years, their one team are the champs, and they dominate the up-and-coming ranks from 4 on down.
 
Rukia said:
I am curious what they think they'll get out of a move to iam. They are very mid, but they don't have the charm and charisma of fear/gibson to really make a move with like entertainment value. It might take some work to get them some kind of personality.
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You know, when they were juniors, DavSmo actually had some charm. I put whatever loss of charisma solely at the door of Kiliakov. Look what he did with Lorraine McNamara, for goodness sakes. It's a shame they were with Igor rather than at IAM as juniors because they certainly had the personality then to pull off programs like Lim/Quan's "Gangnam Style" or Kishimoto/Tamura's "Mr Roboto" RDs which were quite fun and charming in their seasons. There's work to be done but I don't think they're completely lacking in personality and goodness knows if anyone can bring it out of them, it might very well be IAM unless they want to move to Finland (Margaglio) or Japan (Cathy Reed).
 
Colonel Green said:
While IAM is currently down to one team on the World podium from the default of two in prior years, their one team are the champs, and they dominate the up-and-coming ranks from 4 on down.
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Yes, but how many of those will continue after 2026? That leaves them probably with L/B, LaLa and Cpom. It makes sense to add another young team in addition to L/Q who will be moving up the ranks in the next years.
 
Marta24 said:
Yes, but how many of those will continue after 2026? That leaves them probably with L/B, LaLa and Cpom. It makes sense to add another young team in addition to L/Q who will be moving up the ranks in the next years.
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They also have the Browns, Mazingue/Gaidajenko and Holubtsova/Bielobrov in the younger mix, but I don't disagree that adding at team like DavSmo is not unwise if they wish to continue their dominance.
 
marbri said:
Oh to be a fly on the wall when that decision was negotiated. Because Dave also implied a season or two ago that IAM turned them down.
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This did happen. They came in and asked to be considered, it was discussed and from what I was told, there was an interest to train a Russian couple with very different basics, background and it was interesting new challange for the school. Ultimatly, they told them no as they had no federation, no prospects of competitive future. This was the time when Davis and Smolkin were looking into becoming part of USFS and had someone there look into things for them.
 
So if IAM is taking on another team, do we think another team is leaving IAM or have they found more capacity (ie. hired more coaches?)

Maybe Wang/Liu are really done with IAM?
 
Dobre said:
I'm assuming Fear & Gibson will continue.
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In the past I believe they’ve said they wanted to go to 2030. At a minimum I don’t see why they’d stop at 2026 (barring health concerns, obviously) when a Guignard/Fabbri-free European field beckons.
 
As much as I agree that a person is not their parent, this is not any parent. As others have pointed out, Eteri’s school is part of the reason some of the ice dancers from I.AM don’t have their medals. Also, do they not expect Eteri to visit her daughter? Or ask to visit I.AM? She does politic on behalf of her daughter, let’s not pretend she doesn’t. Her daughter flirted with representing the U.S., now represents Georgia, and gets rather generous scores. I have always thought of I.AM as somewhere skaters go to grow in a safe space. I just can’t understand why they would invite this controversy or spotlight. I’ll end on a positive by saying that D/S are very consistent and so likely work hard.

I guess Green/Parson are never heading to I.AM!
 
Debbie S said:
Possibly. I expect FB/S to retire, particularly given their results at Worlds.
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Two many errors and two large a gap in skating level. If Nik were not the weak link they'd have a chance but he doesn't have the chops to lead her. A pity they hadn't tried to find different partners years ago.
 
Sonata said:
As much as I agree that a person is not their parent, this is not any parent. As others have pointed out, Eteri’s school is part of the reason some of the ice dancers from I.AM don’t have their medals. Also, do they not expect Eteri to visit her daughter? Or ask to visit I.AM? She does politic on behalf of her daughter, let’s not pretend she doesn’t. Her daughter flirted with representing the U.S., now represents Georgia, and gets rather generous scores. I have always thought of I.AM as somewhere skaters go to grow in a safe space. I just can’t understand why they would invite this controversy or spotlight. I’ll end on a positive by saying that D/S are very consistent and so likely work hard.

I guess Green/Parson are never heading to I.AM!
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Obviously, we don't know what's going on in the heads of the IAM coaching staff, but I will say this, from my experience in other fields where highly creative and intense, competitive personalities tend to congregate. Those "safe spaces" tend to be at their most "safe" when they're at a medium size. Too small, and you get the "we're like a family!" messaging and all the pressure that comes with it. Too big, and the promise of more and more power, results, and praise becomes too tempting. As we've seen, despite the whole world knowing what Eteri is responsible for, she still, against all logic and decency, has serious influence in the skating world. It's not surprising that a high-profile camp would want to benefit from that.

And I agree, I don't buy for a second that we can ever truly separate the career of D/S from Eteri. Children are not their parents, of course, but I genuinely do not see how a team like D/S could be viewed as anything other than thoroughly middle-of-the-pack on their own merits. Perhaps they are lovely, hard-working people; perhaps not, and most of us will never truly know, but we can all see the scoring vs what's on the ice.

I'll end with one other observation, which is that when one camp becomes so singularly powerful, as IAM has, inevitably something will bring things crashing down. Whether that's a scandal or a split or something else, I don't know, but I can't see the IAM domination lasting for more than another cycle or two, and I'll be very curious to see how the dust settles when it does.
 
There is one higher-ranked IAM team that almost all skating fandom believes is greatly overmarked, and there's one team right behind the top pack that I personally feel is outrageously overmarked and should be down below the likes of even D/S (hint, Europeans at home). If the purists amongst the dance fans here want to be besides themselves with results, perhaps they should start there. Now, if D/S do improve and move up the standings at IAM, I'm sure it'll still be attributed to Eteri in some way.

This board and skating fandom in general is so obsessed with the idea of Eteri being able to buy off the judges, but most of the Federations don't want Russia back in competition. So which is it? Eteri still has power over these people? As I said upthread, D/S have not shown the results, they really haven't moved up the World standings at all (and in fact, you could basically say they dropped spots because of Russia not being in the field now), and they aren't getting any benefit of the doubt. Hell, even Takahashi who couldn't really do half of the ice dance moves got a bigger boost than this team, AND a lot of people happily overlooked it.

I don't know why there's constant agony over them when they aren't medal threats and they really weren't even top 10 threats this year. I'm quite sure they are working just as hard as the next team to improve their skating, too.
 
tony said:
There is one higher-ranked IAM team that almost all skating fandom believes is greatly overmarked, and there's one team right behind the top pack that I personally feel is outrageously overmarked and should be down below the likes of even D/S (hint, Europeans at home). If the purists amongst the dance fans here want to be besides themselves with results, perhaps they should start there. Now, if D/S do improve and move up the standings at IAM, I'm sure it'll still be attributed to Eteri in some way.

This board and skating fandom in general is so obsessed with the idea of Eteri being able to buy off the judges, but most of the Federations don't want Russia back in competition. So which is it? Eteri still has power over these people? As I said upthread, D/S have not shown the results, they really haven't moved up the World standings at all (and in fact, you could basically say they dropped spots because of Russia not being in the field now), and they aren't getting any benefit of the doubt. Hell, even Takahashi who couldn't really do half of the ice dance moves got a bigger boost than this team, AND a lot of people happily overlooked it.

I don't know why there's constant agony over them when they aren't medal threats and they really weren't even top 10 threats this year. I'm quite sure they are working just as hard as the next team to improve their skating, too.
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Because Eteri is at the top of the hated list, for fair reasons (doping and abuse) and circumstantial ones (I’m sure she didn’t tell Putin to capture Ukraine.) Look at all the negatives Egadze and the Georgian pair team got at Worlds. It’s not just D/S.
 
PRlady said:
Because Eteri is at the top of the hated list, for fair reasons (doping and abuse) and circumstantial ones (I’m sure she didn’t tell Putin to capture Ukraine.) Look at all the negatives Egadze and the Georgian pair team got at Worlds. It’s not just D/S.
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Yes, but we can go back to the fall of 2021, before the doping broke and before Russia invaded Ukraine and the hate was still strong on this team. I keep referring to the one fall-B competition where everyone was wildly overmarked yet people only focused on D/S' scores (while others actually had bigger increases in their season's bests, too).

I still think somehow it's going to be all Eteri's supposed power that people bitch about if and when D/S do rise up the ranks, and my point above was that IAM has had other teams greatly overmarked (even Smart and Diaz in the last Olympic cycle which I didn't mention above). So I really don't get where all her power is coming from with the results D/S have had thus forth. She has no power.
 
tony said:
There is one higher-ranked IAM team that almost all skating fandom believes is greatly overmarked, and there's one team right behind the top pack that I personally feel is outrageously overmarked and should be down below the likes of even D/S (hint, Europeans at home). If the purists amongst the dance fans here want to be besides themselves with results, perhaps they should start there. Now, if D/S do improve and move up the standings at IAM, I'm sure it'll still be attributed to Eteri in some way.

This board and skating fandom in general is so obsessed with the idea of Eteri being able to buy off the judges, but most of the Federations don't want Russia back in competition. So which is it? Eteri still has power over these people? As I said upthread, D/S have not shown the results, they really haven't moved up the World standings at all (and in fact, you could basically say they dropped spots because of Russia not being in the field now), and they aren't getting any benefit of the doubt. Hell, even Takahashi who couldn't really do half of the ice dance moves got a bigger boost than this team, AND a lot of people happily overlooked it.

I don't know why there's constant agony over them when they aren't medal threats and they really weren't even top 10 threats this year. I'm quite sure they are working just as hard as the next team to improve their skating, too.
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Why not? And it’s not about Eteri, but about russia. russia plans to return, which means they cannot release “their” judges. Moreover, there are many fake judges from, for example, Azerbaijan, where russia is happy to release skaters. Do you think these judges are interested in the fate of these skaters? Of course not. They have one goal - to help russia.
And you don't have to go far. Ukrainian judges supported russia before and are now happy to support D/S. The ties there are so deep that no war can break them.
 
airgelaal said:
Why not? And it’s not about Eteri, but about russia. russia plans to return, which means they cannot release “their” judges. Moreover, there are many fake judges from, for example, Azerbaijan, where russia is happy to release skaters. Do you think these judges are interested in the fate of these skaters? Of course not. They have one goal - to help russia.
And you don't have to go far. Ukrainian judges supported russia before and are now happy to support D/S. The ties there are so deep that no war can break them.
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Australia, Spain, Hungary, and Poland all marked D/S quite a bit higher than they were in either the RD, the FD, or both at Worlds. Hungary's top team is trained by Fusar-Poli. Poland's team is part of Zanni's camp. The other two come from IAM. At Euros, even the British judge had them a bit higher in the FD.

So let's fixate on the Soviet bloc when there are examples from other 'camps' all over the World (if you want to associate judges with ice dance camps) marking them very well, and I guarantee don't give a shit about Eteri Tutberidze and/or what she has ever had to offer.

Also, Ukraine isn't exactly the best example for a history of fair and honest judging. If the judges from Ukraine want to go out of their way to over-support every Russian skater, then what can I say?

ETA- going back to the Budapest Trophy, it was the USA, Canada, and Austria who handed out the highest scores to D/S in the RD, and the USA and Canada in the free dance.
 
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I hate Eteri with a passion and think she should be banned from all ISU events, but her daughter and son-in-law are not responsible for the sins of the mother. It's also not Dav/Smo's fault that they were sometimes overmarked when they were skating for Russia. Hey, I even surprised myself by actually liking their FD at Worlds.:lol: Everyone in ice dance plays the politics game so the move to IAM is hardly earth shattering (although it's great for:watch:). So maybe let's give this move the benefit of the doubt for now. We can go back to full on snark once the 2024-25 season is well underway.;)
 
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