The Dance Hall 13: When You Dance on the Ice and Your Feet Twizzle Twice, That's Amore

[Bigbird]

If you're going to give people a theme, don't rip their hearts out by shredding their choices to bits! Mid tempos would have increased the variety of programs and music. Even a drop to 90 bpm would have helped. It's just so ridiculously confining.

 

[Former Lurve Goddess]

If only the RD theme had been a waltz to 90s music…

 

[marbri]

All I can add is give me V/M doing the samba to "Sympathy for the Devil" all day, any day over the disaster that we have this season. And while Rettstatt gets a lot of deserved hate for what he has done to dance ( how a mediocre judge with terrible bias landed this gig is another story) it probably didn't help for those that kept whining that "Sympathy for the Devil" wasn't authentic samba music because you all sucked then as much as he sucks today

 

[Former Lurve Goddess]

All I can add is give me V/M doing the samba to "Sympathy for the Devil" all day, any day over the disaster that we have this season. And while Rettstatt gets a lot of deserved hate for what he has done to dance ( how a mediocre judge with terrible bias landed this gig is another story) it probably didn't help for those that kept whining that "Sympathy for the Devil" wasn't authentic samba music because you all sucked then as much as he sucks today

Mick Jagger intended the song to be a samba. But I’m sure we all argued about this back in 2018.

 

[marbri]

Mick Jagger intended the song to be a samba. But I’m sure we all argued about this back in 2018.

Right?

What's that saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Damn this idiot and his ID panel for "fixing" things.

 

[Bigbird]

I honestly forgot to give my props to the IAM School this week. They really did come through for Davis and Smolkin. They are much improved, as are Harris and Chan. Rather than having a one-size-fits-all all mentality as per the School of Zhulin, or let's just make this as cluttered and difficult as possible and disjointed as possible, as per the School of Krylova, these people seem to know how to take lemons and make quite good lemonade. Krylova's Ex-Husband was apparently the choreographic specialist in her team, but I did enjoy some of her programmes for Weaver and Poje, and she had done an Indian Dance that I thought was pretty good for one of her teams. Krylova needs a choreographic whiz that can help her refine her packaging. Any thoughts on whom she should engage?

 

[angi]

Davis/Smolkin did improve, but their scoring this week (and the level calls for her) at Trialeti Trophy was beyond questionable. In general, this event had some of the most sketchy home ice cooking in a long time, not a promising start for this event.

 

[Karen-W]

Davis/Smolkin did improve, but their scoring this week (and the level calls for her) at Trialeti Trophy was beyond questionable. In general, this event had some of the most sketchy home ice cooking in a long time, not a promising start for this event.

Well, even discounting this week's RD score, they did score 77.94 at Denis Ten Mem last week - and that scoring didn't seem particularly out of line, as far as I can tell. DavSmo's 77.94 would still place them in the top 3 on the RD SB list - ahead of the Taschlers, Les Gacs, ZingKol and CarPon who are all within .5 of each other ranging from 76.55 to 76.11 - no one is scoring particularly well and DavSmo's RD is probably the best of the season so far, so I'm not side-eying their score here that much.

 

[angi]

Well, even discounting this week's RD score, they did score 77.94 at Denis Ten Mem last week - and that scoring didn't seem particularly out of line, as far as I can tell. DavSmo's 77.94 would still place them in the top 3 on the RD SB list - ahead of the Taschlers, Les Gacs, ZingKol and CarPon who are all within .5 of each other ranging from 76.55 to 76.11 - no one is scoring particularly well and DavSmo's RD is probably the best of the season so far, so I'm not side-eying their score here that much.

I think their scoring at the Denis Ten Memorial was also out of line, their baseline is around 73-74, especially considering the levels they achieved (Davis in particular, got level 1 for all of her step sequences in both the RD and FD). Denis Ten Memorial was always borderline home ice for them, they won it every time they participated in it, and I suspect that's partially the reason why the top teams avoid it.

In general, looking at the protocol at Trialeti Trophy tells the story very well - not only did they suddenly hit their levels (which, watching the skate, is obvious she hasn't), the judges worked very hard to increase both their GOEs and PCS while keeping others lower than usual. The same can be easily observed in pairs, they weren't at all subtle about it.

 

[Bigbird]

I noticed the improved packaging and ease of flow. I wasn't too jarred by their scoring, because the GP and all other comps tend to sort them out. It's like when P/C went to the Soviet Bloc countries for Europeans, and all of a sudden, the Russians would be neck and neck with them. It's just more of the same. That's one of the reasons I adored the Shibsibs. When they came to Russia, they ate and left no crumbs; the judges could not find a flaw to exploit. They were the definition of swag.

 

[jägerbomb]

Davis/Smolkin did improve, but their scoring this week (and the level calls for her) at Trialeti Trophy was beyond questionable. In general, this event had some of the most sketchy home ice cooking in a long time, not a promising start for this event.

Mordovian Ornament 2.0

 

[jägerbomb]

Hard disagree, with regard to the RD theme this year. There is plenty of great '90s music, but it's hardly IAM's fault that almost all of the teams, across the globe, are struggling to come up with good music selections for the RD. They aren't showing a similar lack of diversity in their music choices & concepts when it comes to the FD this season (well, some of the top teams are, but that's a different discussion), nor were there problems with a wide range of good RDs coming from a variety of ice dance schools the past two seasons. The limitations the IDTC put on the music options for the RD this year ARE the root of the problem - also, another limiting factor is the choice to use the rhumba for the pattern step - the IDTC could have easily gone with a waltz and that may have made a difference for teams looking for music options that go together cohesively.

Fair enough. I just like to shoehorn my "IAM monopoly is bad for the sport" thesis here as much as possible.