The music of Olympic figure skating isn't what it could be
Music epitomizes the uneasy line that figure skating has long tried to walk between athleticism and art. Do you want a skater who creatively interprets the music and gives an ethereal, memorable performance? Or one who can nail all the jumps? The answer has never been clear.
That tension was brought into the spotlight at the 2002 Winter Games, when Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze beat the Canadian pair of Jamie Salé and David Pelletier because their marks for "presentation" (the art part) overshadowed the Canadians' clear win on "technical merit," because a French judge was coerced into skewing her vote.
The resulting controversy sparked a massive overhaul of the rules and judging system in 2004. Yet even under the new system, which involves minute scrutiny (with replays) of each technical element involved in a program, a part of the final total includes marks for choreography and interpretation -- the "art" part of the equation, which directly relates to the musical selection.
Initially, the new rules inspired skaters with a new sense of caution. Skaters are "starting to use music that is repetitive and has less definition than it used to have," Weisiger says. "A lot of programs now use music that sounds the same over and over, kind of drones on and on."
But Weisiger doesn't think the new rules are the whole problem. It's "also a new generation of choreographers," she says, who "don't have the same appreciation for classical music."
Even for those who do want to improve the musical level of the sport, there are limits to what you can do in less than five minutes, especially when you're working with a skater, a choreographer and a coach who may all have their own ideas of what they want.
"The problem is that these people don't know any music," says music writer David Hurwitz, who established a small side business on his CD-reviewing Web site, Classics Today, to advise figure skaters on their musical choices. Skaters tend to cling to what has done well before: "Carmen," in various permutations, tops a list that includes a heavy dose of Russian ballet and dance music ("Swan Lake," "Scheherazade") and Spanish-themed works.
