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 treatment by serious media.
Sport-centered outlets are familiar with personal interest stories and backstage controversy. But they also publish with an assumption that the readership for a story about any given sport will be acquainted with its technical ins and outs. If tasked with seriously interviewing an elite athlete, they will consider practical concerns like training, changes in strategy, and optimizing outcomes, and they will seek answers that will have a real, evident meaning for the audience. The athletes in skating’s jump-focused disciplines of singles and pairs of may be covered in this way; the advanced and varied quad jumps of a Nathan Chen are easily explained to even a general audience. But this is less often the case in ice dance, with its fewer spills and less obviously-daring elements.
I am not seeking to single out any reporters or athletes for censure with this critique, but have rather selected this piece as an example of an article that illustrates many of the assumptions and deficits that can too often exist in mainstream ice dance coverage. (Take, for another example, this report of the 2018 Olympic ice dance event; read it and then answer what these skaters did in athletic terms to accomplish their results.)
Gaps like those detailed in the following piece would not typically be acceptable in reporting on other sports, or even art forms, by a major publication. Leave aside expectations about conventional skating coverage, and consider this instead in the framework of an ESPN interview with Simone Biles or Steph Curry, or a New York Times Q&A with Misty Copeland. In either scenario, consider the idea of the experienced journalist conducting a similar interview, or the athlete or artist responding in like kind. Consider whether you would be satisfied, or walk away from the piece with more questions than answers.
It is worth noting that in this particular article, given the parties involved, there may be an unacknowledged matter of French-to-English translation that muddies the content further. However, the interview was first published in English for an English-language audience, and thus can still reasonably be evaluated on those grounds.
The full article is available at NBC Sports. Under the fair use doctrine, I have quoted only those selections directly addressed for the purposes of criticism. This is not intended to mislead, and does not alter the context of my comments regarding what topics remain unaddressed in the original. I encourage all to visit the full article.
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Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron are three-time world ice dance champions and the 2018 Olympic silver medalists. Jean-Christophe Berlot is a long-time French figure skating journalist. My comments are indicated in plain text.
J.C. Berlot: Will missing the Grand Prix Final this year be a big change for you?
Papadakis and Cizeron missed the entire Grand Prix series in the 2015-16 season. This would ideally be acknowledged, even as an editor’s parenthetical — the circumstance is not unprecedented for the team.
Papadakis: […] As we wanted to start for another quadrennial, we needed renewed strength, both physically and mentally. So, we have taken more vacation than we had in many years, we really needed to rest. […]
What did your vacation schedule entail? When did you begin work on the new programs? What has a typical off-season schedule been for you previously?
Berlot: You seem to have changed many things this year.
This is a vague opinion presented as statement of fact. The reader needs to know what the interviewer presumes them to have changed, and what the skating viewer might be able to observe as change for themselves.
Cizeron: This year we’ve worked just as much as before, but we’ve changed our approach. We want to experiment and try new things, and we try not to put too much pressure on ourselves. […]
How have you changed your approach? Mindset? New on- or off-ice training regimens? New consultants?
Berlot: Do you think it’s possible to create under pressure?
As figure skating athletes, if Papadakis and Cizeron intend to continue, they and their coaches and choreographers are obligated to “create” under pressure. The alternative is not to present any program.
What is the nature of this presumed pressure — are they being chased closely by another competitor? Over the last three seasons, they have not lost any leg of competition to any team currently competing. It’s possible there’s a translation issue here and the emphasis is not “pressure” so much as “being the favorites” and thus having a target on their backs, a common phenomenon in other sports.
Papadakis: It’s true, that’s more difficult. Pressure is coming from the others, but it’s also the one you put yourself on your shoulders. Pressure is helpful, though, as it makes you go faster.
“Go faster” in what sense?
Cizeron: […] We try to enrich ourselves by developing new collaborations, as well as our physical and artistic capacities, at their best. We have the same energy to create, develop, learn, engage ourselves into different directions. We are meeting new people. That motivates us and helps us discovering beautiful new things. That’s how we will make our sport evolve.
Can you go into detail about your collaborations? Work with other choreographers is known and also discussed later, but this seems to suggest something beyond that (as, for example, you already knew your choreographers). What are the activities in your day-to-day life that contribute to your further development as athletes, and how specifically does that manifest in your work on ice? Can you talk about these “beautiful new things”? How do you believe they will evolve the sport, as a scored, objectively contested sport?
Berlot: Your rhythm dance was quite special; usually tango can be quite stiff and formal. Yours is completely fluid. How do you make passion so fluid?
1. Is passion not fluid? What is the existing relationship between this vague emotional state and physics to begin with?
2. What constitutes fluidity in this context, including in a skating context? What is uniquely fluid, in contrast with other skaters, about what they’re doing?
3. How is tango antithetical to fluidity? Argentine tango is a deeply fluid style in the sense of linked movements, mutual slinking interplay between partners interspersed with the staccato elements. Ballroom tango is a famously harsher style, but Tango Romantica has already readily lent itself to an Argentine-styled interpretation.
Papadakis: Thank you, that’s a compliment for us. Fluid is the way we like to skate. We enjoy choreography when it allows to glide free and keep that freedom into our programs. This is the reason why we chose these pieces. They inspired us for this reason. Tango speaks for itself, it is a universal language. It calls for passion.
We have our own way to skate, for sure, and we’re not going to leave it. We like to take a lot of speed and then skate slower. That gives us the feeling that we fly. It’s much more agreeable for us to skate this way, so we’re always trying to keep that same feeling.
How does your “own way to skate” differ from conventional skating technique? What is the technical approach — from blades up, not “fast and slow,” which is a question of pace — that sets your specific mode of skating apart from that of anyone else in the sport?
You and your coach, Marie-France Dubreuil, have mentioned in prior interviews that the turns and steps of the compulsory patterns tend to run counter to your preferred technique. Can you discuss this problem in more detail and if the Tango Romantica, which is newer than much of the rest of the pattern canon, is an exception to this concern?
Berlot: Your free dance is quite different from the ones you’ve performed these last years. How do you maintain the balance between changing and staying yourselves?
How is this free dance different in a way visibly demonstrated on the ice? If the music from this and every other prior free dance were removed, how would we recognize that difference? This question needs to be presented to the reader with more specificity; if it does refer primarily or exclusively to the music, that must be made explicit.
Cizeron: […]This is always a matter of compromising in both directions, in order to find something which is going to both please people and inspire us at the same time. We try to show other aspects of skating, of choreography, of energy: but we can’t do things that wouldn’t look like us. I think we have met the challenge this year.
What are the “other aspects of skating” that you’re showing, and conversely, what are your trademarks? What makes something characteristic of you? A genre of program? Specific approach to elements? Is a program like the faster-paced, more transition-heavy Pink Floyd or Woodkid free dances that you competed prior to your 2014 move to train at Gadbois now something you’d consider off the table?
Cizeron: That’s why also we’ve changed our choreographic process. We’ve worked with Stéphane Lambiel last July (the 2005 and 2006 World gold medalist from Switzerland has become a respected coach and choreographer, as well as a coveted performer throughout the world), and he has provided us with lots of new material. It’s been very inspiring. Marie-France Dubreuil, who coaches us (alongside with Patrice Lauzon and Romain Haguenauer), has put all the pieces we had created with Stéphane together.
To be clear, Stéphane choreographed certain pieces (elements, transitions?) but the whole of the program was assembled by Marie-France, as in prior seasons? What were Stéphane’s specific contributions to the program — can you identify what we should look for in the program to know his work?
Cizeron: […] We’ve also changed significantly the style of our music. The piano had become our trademark: now the base of our free dance is the guitar, and that modifies significantly the energy within our bodies. […]
How does the different “energy within your bodies” manifest itself on the ice, in ways apparent to the viewer’s eye?
Papadakis: This year’s program is more down-to-earth. It tells a story with two precise people, an encounter between two individuals who are destined to live something together, possibly two lovers. They evolve across one another, rather than looking after the same ideal together. That’s also new for us.
This is story concept, but in what new way is this concept demonstrated in your specific movement and choreography, as visible to judges and audience?
Cizeron: We even have lyrics in our music this time!
What distinction is there, in what you’re executing, between skating to a moderate tempo piano instrumental and a moderate tempo guitar piece with lyrics? If lyrics are the defining distinction, you also skated to music with lyrics in your 2015-16 free dance that included “To Build a Home” — is it extent of the use of lyrics that separates the two programs? In what way does use of lyrics impact your approach to movement; have you chosen to choreograph to the lyric at any point, do you find it creates another rhythmic layer that you either choose to work with or against?
Berlot: You sometimes give the feeling that your approach is an intellectual one. Is this something deliberate?
“Feeling” and “intellectual” are undefined terms here. Can you provide an example of what signifies intellectualism in a team’s skating? Is it based on their comments about their skating? Something about the skating itself, and if so, what?
Cizeron: In fact, we don’t have an intellectual approach. Our approach is more physical and deeply felt. If we do intellectualize our skating, it’s because we will have analyzed what we’ve been doing in just intuitive a way. Our skating is always something deliberate, with a clear intention. But a lot comes from the feelings and the impressions we get. We just try to make programs that move people.
What does intentionality mean in terms of executed on-ice movement? What do “feelings” and “impressions” mean in this context?
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Good work in the field can be found. This interview with Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir by arts reporter Robert Everett-Green approaches their work from a thorough, technically-thoughtful perspective. My own experience covering ice dance for an arts magazine included the expectation that the sport be presented in a clear, detailed way that prioritized the concrete over the ethereal. Sports reporters like Lori Ewing have capably covered this most mysterious of skating disciplines with respect. Ice dance’s audience should simply expect this as a rule, more than exception.
