Tuesday, February 23, 2010

"Golden Train"

I love to say 'I told you so'!

Not only did Tessa & Scott just rock last night, they helped to prove that less is always more!

From the costumes, to the music choice, right down to the simplest choreographed head turn, they were understated elegance.

All of the European teams last night of course donned the dramatic fru-fru costumes that they are known for. Three of the teams actually even used the same piece of music, which isn't even that good of a selection of music. They should take a note out of the book of simplicity, and just let their skating speak for themselves.

Maybe all of the over-the-top music, costumes and choreography these teams had are all just to hide the fact that their basic skating skills aren't as strong. This new judging system seems to really be working in ice-dance in helping to award the real winners. The skating skills are judged, musicality, choreography, and plain greatness! I don't like how in the other disciplines people can still win with falls or mistakes, based on the fact that they just load their programs with technical elements. Last night the two top dance teams both proved that skating has redeemed itself.

The same is true to me in dance... as really great dancing just speaks for itself. Put away all the big props, the 3-dimensional amazon costumes and just dance. There is of course a degree of creativity that is involved in making your students stand out, and that's where teachers tend to turn to elaborate costumes and set pieces. However, I think we all need to make sure that if we took away the props, and the kids performed in plain black costumes, that the dance would still stand on it's own as a piece of creative and strong work that you are proud of.

I'm sure there are thousands of little girls and boys alike today signing up for ice dance lessons at their local arenas. As a business person I see great opportunity here that cannot be ignored... I'm going to send the Russian Federation my resume so they will hire me to design their costumes for next year!

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