Fresca

What a beautiful family picture that would be! It would look like a CLAMP manga cover! Too much shiny!!

If things don't quite work out, I'm sure they would have the right genes to become ballet superstars Slim body, long neck, long limbs, insane turnout, flexibility and innate sense of balance I'm sure the JSF and RSU would be very supportive!

I agree. LGC is more technically complex but as a program, it is straighforward - he's playing a high energy rockstar with aplomb. Chopin was definitely more artistically complex and needed to be skated as clean as it was for it to reach its full potential (same as H&L). With his perfect technique and Jeff's choreography, his skating joined with Chopin's piano to become a beautiful artistic expression of falling raindrops through music and movement.

@koneko I'm bringing the discussion on Nathan's ballet technique and his jump landings over here into the Team USA thread. Your comment below on how dancers trained in Balanchine technique are taught to keep their weight on the balls of their feet is so interesting! I'm a bit of a footwork geek because I started with ballet then tried out into other styles (jazz, contemporary, hip hop, ballroom) and different styles require your feet to have a different relationship with the floor. Latin ballroom is the same as Balanchine technique in the aspect of keeping weight on the balls of the feet. That's how you get the quick footwork and hip and knee action in Latin ballroom but it works because Latin ballroom is a "forward leaning" style, ie you don't really have shifts of weight backwards big enough which require you to put much pressure on the heel unlike a foxtrot. In ballet, I can think of such shifts of weight backward which would require weight to be put on the heel for balance but perhaps it's because I'm not familiar with Balanchine technique. For example, developpe devant in plie (with the pelvis tilted backward even as in Rubies) or jete entrelace into arabesque in plie. How do they adjust to keep balance whilst keeping the weight on the balles of the feet? Since in skating there is such a shift of weight backward in jump landings, perhaps Nathan does some similar adjustment when he lands which leads to him to land tilted forward and lose speed going out of jumps.

That is so interesting! I have more questions but I will put them in the Team USA thread so we can discuss Nathan's wonky landings and subpar plie in more detail. Thanks for the well wishes!!!

Agreed but it's also because of CoP and how judges are scoring PCS and GOE if you do quads. Spins, artistry and SS are not rewarded enough relative to quads with BV, GOE and PCS. So only way to challenge Yuzu is quads because he's such a good all around skater he racks up the points on all his elements.

As another great discussion has been started, this time about ballet and fs, I've opened up a separate thread for you all, so there is no need to worry about cluttering other threads! Thank you very much guys, I hope you continue on! Edit by Yatagarasu _______________________ Most of my ballet training was also based on the Vaganova method. I don't know all the particulars of Balanchine technique but yes, his ballets have a lot of very fast choreography. I'm not sure though if training to do fast footwork and jumps would affect Nathan's jump landings negatively. I would think speed would require even better plie and better strength so you can push off the floor faster for the next element. I also think Nathan has to work on his plie in his skates in general not just in his jumps as he has stiff knees and doesnt go very deep in the knee at all. I'd love to hear more of what you think! (maybe in the Nathan thread if there is one?)

It looks like ABBA gone bad. But...I think I can forgive them as I have just discovered this joyous gift from them via Google images! Yuzu in a suit that fits!!!! The jacket is cropped short like a waistcoat, the construction of the shoulders could be better and the sleeves are a tad too long (the sleeve should end where the wrist ends and the thumb begins) but this is really nitpicking especially compared to the others he has in his closet. Someone please Photoshop this to a black suit!!

I have already claimed his Vaganova fingers in the Wedding Plans thread! On Nathan, you are preaching to the choir He needs to work on his plie and his hips. In fairness to him though, he does have beautiful port de bras More Balanchine than Vaganova and I prefer Vaganova but still very beautiful.

I don't agree with this at all. The more flexible you are, the bigger the range of movement in your joints, it's true. But if you can control the movement of your joints using your muscles, if you have the technique to know how to use such range of movement properly, then you can have both. If you look at gymnasts, dancers or martial artists where flexibility is a must, the best don't sacrifice their flexibility to execute the difficult elements which require the most control. For example, here is Ivan Vasiliev doing double revoltades (doesn't it look like an axel jump with tano? ). Or Farukh Ruzimatov doing jete cloche en tournant (a jump with a scissor split followed by a turn in the air). Perhaps I'm being too pessimistic but it sounds to me like Mishin is making excuses.

Flowers! I'll try to do it this weekend. I've been wanting to do a big post like this anyway including some notes on choreography and aesthetics like how Shoma's FS is not a tango and Javi has castanet hands. If I have even more time, I'll try to do both the SP and the FS.

Yuzu does have beautiful turnout His turnout and his edges make his spread eagle, Ina Bauer and Besti squat extra, extra special. One of the things that disappointed me about Nathan was that though he has the ballet background, his turnout is not great and his spread eagle is actually quite ugly... Thank you! Glad to know you found the posts interesting! Yes, I think it might be better to set up a separate thread if people want to discuss those topics more. I have already littered Yuzu's Overall Skating Talk thread with posts about others' jump technique

Yes, Jason has more flexibility in the legs while Yuzu has more flexibility in the hips and back. Back flexibility is what allows Yuzu to do the Biellman and layback Ina Bauer

Thanks so much for the compliments!!! When I have time, I'll rewatch and try to put together a post with my commentary on their jumps from what I know. I'm afraid I'm not sure I'll be able to comment on take off because dance is so different from figure skating in this regard (for example, in dance all jumps begin with the same push off the floor- the plie- either on 1 foot or 2 and there is no such concept as prerotation because turnout is proper technique in ballet) but I will try to comment on everything else.

I agree that Yuzu is on another level. The proof of an artist's musicality in movement is in their improv. How do their bodies naturally respond to a piece of music? It's spontaneous choreography, if you will and as you said, attention to detail is key. When Yuzu improvs his skating rather than follows choreography as he did during his botched 3A Notte Stellata landings, his YOLO quads/3A or the details he changed in Boston's Requiem in the latter half, everything is still beautifully done to the music with that special attention to detail. He is aware of the music and of his movement from the top of his head to his fingers to his toes. Perhaps it's just that I haven't been paying attention but I haven't seen this level of musicality from Shoma, Jason or Patrick. Off topic, but this is my favorite display of musicality in any genre of artistic movement I have seen (sorry Yuzu, even more than you). Hip hop freestyle to piano music. Purely technique and musicality. It doesn't need anything else. ETA: I'm a tissue box!!!

That makes sense. You can build flexibility elsewhere but hip flexibility is pretty much genetic, especially the degree of turnout that Yuzu has. If Yuzu were taller, he'd have the ideal body of a male ballet dancer if he built up enough upper body muscle to do lifts.

It's also here on twitter. I will have to disagree with that poster on FSuniverse. Yuzu is the king of turnout. Turnout flexibility is solely from the hips and Yuzu can do spread eagle and Ina Bauer with his blades turned out more than 180 degrees. His turnout in his R&J2 Ina Bauer where he carves a half circle in the ice is insane. Flexibility to do the splits comes from the hips and the legs. While Jason has both and has more flexible legs than Yuzu, he doesn't have the level of flexibility in the hips that Yuzu does.

That is indeed very scary and troubling. This is why having skaters like Akiko Suziki call his jumps "textbook" is so disappointing. It's sending the message that these landings are correct when in reality they are highly increasing the risk of injury to the skater. I hope Shoma fixes his jumps before it's too late. Yes, me too. Unfortunately, there aren't any signs of him slowing down. Didn't Rafael Aruntyunyan say Nathan has new things up his sleeve for next season? Frankly, I'm surprised Nathan isn't paying more attention to his hip alignment in his jumps and working more to fix it given his background in ballet. Keeping the hips square and aligned is part of ballet fundamentals. It's key to performing many of the basic ballet steps and positions like rond de jambe and arabesque. If he's done an extensive amount of ballet, it should theoretically be a habit for him to keep his hips properly aligned as much as possible.

Also, congratulations and thank you to the mods and admins for getting the new site up and running with all these cool new features!

The very selfish part of me wants him to do sectionals as an opportunity for him to perform his old beautiful 1-2 quad programs that he never got clean like Etude, R&J1, R&J2 or POTO. Of the 4, Etude and R&J2 are the ones which would get the biggest upgrades in quality.

There is a lot wrong with that landing. You can see here the issues that I mentioned above: 1) misalignment of the foot and knee, 2) misalignment of the torso and the lower body and 3) misalignment of the shoulders and the hips. The sweeping motion he does with his arm is a balance check that helps him realign his torso. He wrenches himself back into alignment to land the jump but physics is making him pay a high price for these jumps with his body. The scariest part is that these kinds of landings from him are not one-offs but seem to be how he commonly lands some of his jumps. I don't want to think about how his 4Lz will look like.

No worries! I'll try to answer as best as I can with what I know! Yes, they're related. When he lands with his upper body pitched too forward, he can't quite land with his foot under his center of gravity, i.e. his center of gravity is forward of his foot because of his upper body. That means he needs to move his upper body backward to shift his center of gravity back so it's over his foot so he can balance himself. He does this by raising the hip of his free leg and then uses his hip, his core and the momentum from unwrapping his free leg to wrench his upper body back.

Thanks everyone for your kind words! :pbow: :pbow: :pbow: I'm happy to know that there are people who find the posts interesting/useful! Where to begin with Shoma? :cry: :cry: :cry: He does have worse issues... Let's start with his feet and his knees. Even if he has a deep knee bend and really strong core, butt and leg muscles to control the impact of his landings, when he lands, often his landing foot is not aligned with his knee which puts stress on his ankle and his knee. The left is an example of correct alignment and the right is an example of incorrect alignment. . Secondly, he has alignment issues in his torso. I notice that he generally lands with his hips level with each other. Unfortunately, they are not aligned with anything else! One issue is sometimes he lands with his whole torso (both hips and shoulders) not facing the correct direction (i.e. his back should be facing toward the backward direction of his skating). Other times, the torso itself is twisted with the hips and shoulders facing different directions. In both cases, he lands with the spine twisted which is bad for the back and bad for the rest of his torso because he needs to wrench himself into alignment to balance. Sometimes, he even combines misalignment with the lower body with misalignment in the upper body. I notice that his alignment is worse on his jumps landed UR. It seems many of his fans don't care if his UR jumps don't get called by the tech panel as long as he gets the points and the medals. But his UR jumps lead to landings with bad alignment which can lead to bad injuries!

All his quads are harmful for his hips. :cry: When he lands his quads, I notice that his hips are always misaligned - the hip of the free leg is raised higher than the one of the landing leg which is what causes him to unwrap his free leg strangely (he swings it to the side and then to the back so it's almost 90 degrees to the ice). The proper alignment which puts the least stress on the hips and back is to keep the hips level with each other and the same direction as the shoulders so you create a box with your hips and your shoulders. I made a veeery simple picture below of the view from the back of proper alignment vs. Nathan alignment. Hopefully it gives an idea of what I mean. Sometimes he raises his left hip a lot because he lands a bit off-balance on his landing leg and needs to readjust. Other times not so much but I don't think I've ever seen him land a quad with level hips. I think it's become a bad habit.

These are excellent choices.