by Jacquelyn Thayer “Hell is empty and all the devils are here,” was the quote that kept intruding upon me, quietly but insistently, while watching the debut of the Joffrey Ballet’s made-for-digital Boléro, a 16-minute piece choreographed by company artist Yoshihisa Arai and starring Anais Bueno, set to Maurice Ravel’s infamously repetitive composition. Not to…
by Jacquelyn Thayer Figure skating is a distinctive breed of Olympic sport, where subjective preference is in regular conflict with objective measurement. This shapes its perception among viewers — read any fan discussion to see how even a skater’s technical scores can easily become a topic of heated debate — but just as much its…
Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, the most demonstrably versatile team in ice dance history, have also just laid claim to the title of most decorated skating team in Olympic history — a tally of two gold medals in the individual ice dance event and team event in PyeongChang brought their total across three Olympic…
by Jacquelyn Thayer There’s a form of lived choreography that any music lover will know intimately: you act on the rhythms of your personal soundtrack, attached to a playlist or the looped tunes in your own head. It informs the footsteps and fidgets, enhances triumph and trauma. It’s automatic. In Baby Driver, the trappings of…
Pasquale Camerlengo with Angelika Krylova and long-time students Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje at the 2014 World Figure Skating Championships. (Photo by Chris McGrath for Getty Images AsiaPac) by Jacquelyn Thayer Continuing our cutting room floor series, these insights from Pasquale Camerlengo were captured during a June 2015 interview. As a competitive ice dancer in…
