4Nessie

And it is rare to hear something like this from Czech commentators, because they are generally speaking matter-of-factly and don't like to express much of their own opinion...

I have to say, that month of Edvin Marton and Otonal on constant replay has an effect on me already. That music got an entirely new meaning for me. Now I love it. And there are only four Yuzu's music choices I like to listen to without Yuzu's skating. These two, R&J 1.0 and Haru Yo Koi. Edit: As I am thinking about it, I think Yuzu should definitely do some music marketing. His music choices could do some pretty scary chart jumps...

There probably will be some differences between Zen-Yuzu's Full Power theme and the same Full Power theme overtaken by Full-Kuyashii-Yuzu... right?

Oh my... That was amazing! Pure art with emotions pouring out... That's what I call expressing music done well. Thank you for this link, I didn't know something like that existed. One more video on my rewatch list.

That part was my favorite!

Ugh... I don't know. I know he is talented and all that, but all those exaggerating articles about him made me dislike Nathan even before he started to skate properly. It's really a shame. He could have been good. But I don't thing such pressure was a wise thing to do for his career. So yeah, everyone can talk about skaters being balletic, but it doesn't mean very much. Sadly, there are people that don't recognize quality in movement and they have to rely on judges and commentaries. How could they learn to recognize quality when some judges give +1 to quality elements? In many cases, reputation is more important than quality. It's quite sad.

It would be so much fun to watch if done properly. Also, I would like to see more variability in music choices. There are so many music gems out there and everyone is still doing R&Js, POTOs, Carmens, Tango de Roxanne, generic soldier costume programs, ... I get that... you have to make the audience happy. But I hate the assumption that you have to skate to something people are familiar with to have success...

Exactly. Yuzu nails it. We live in a great skating era, where Yuzu provides us with his Yuzu-mojo. But after watching Yuzu, you sometimes look for similar feeling with other skaters, where you can't find it. However, each season is better and better and young skaters are trying to express that as well, Yuzu being their idol. I am looking forward to see all those skaters grow up and show us their own magic...

Michal's Kodo is great and I've loved it back in 2011 as well. Tomas Verner had also a great asian program in 2008. As I said, many skaters worldwide do music from different culture. It is not necessary a bad thing. They may have a nice choreography and convey some typical movements. There is just often something missing, that cannot be expressed by movement, but only by some inner emotions or something like that. But I am an emotional person and when I don't see emotions in skating programs, they lack something important for me. So again, it can be my personal problem with such programs.

I don't want to say it's required to always express some 'typical' parts that show off that culture. It is not needed. But if you don't show it, you need to give the audience something else. Not only a generic skating. It can be done, surely. But it is not very common. If you have some interesting links, I am opened to suggestions. I haven't been following FS so thoroughly. On the other hand, I am probably very much influenced by Yuzu's skating, because I haven't seen many skaters that would emit such emotions in each program. I somehow got used to it and now it's a bit hard to watch other skaters and accept that they skate with less emotions or none at all.

Confirmed! Gypsy Wakaba was almost as good as Gypsy Yuzu!

I agree to some extend. But my opinion on music choices is a bit different maybe. I think that a skater should choose his music for some reason. To show something through that music. If you choose Irish music, than you should show something that is specific for it, otherwise you could choose anything and skate the same program to it. That's the main problem imo. Many skaters choose music that they like for some reason, but they are not able to express it fully.

Okay, I've watched those. I don't think that skating good program to that particular music is the same as to properly express the culture characteristics though...

Oh, you're right! That Riverdance is not bad at all. I didn't know about it. And now that I've seen that one, I know for sure that Yuzu would do it perfectly. The only thing is the ability to express certain cultural nuances. It is very hard even when you belong to that culture. And I've surely seen some very bad spanish flamenco performed by Spaniards before, so that ability would be an individual thing. Imo though, many people don't see this and judge very blindly based on their own experience and imagination. Edit: But then again, I saw quite many Japanese music programs performed by European skaters and no one complained...

Sooo, I am sorry about my previous posts. I don't want to be biased, so I did some research to see how many tango/paso/flamenco-'ish' programs I like. I watched only men's. Boyang Jin 2015 - nice skate, not really a tango for me Florent Amodio 2014 - eh... it was a bit too much Plushenko - I really can't judge this. He is one of the greatest, I get that and respect that, but I never liked his style. Stéphane Lambiel 2008 - yeah, that's the feeling... Patrick Chan 2009 - No. Sorry, no. That program was beautiful, but no tango feeling... Tomáš Verner 2014 - (To not sound too harsh only on foreign skaters...) he was a good comic, but not much of a tango oh and Lysacek 2011 - It was close. It had all the right movements so it should have been the right one. But something still missing there, imo. Then I found a video of Brian Orser, Kurt Browning and Alexei Yagudin skating to Tango - it is a jewel. It's too short to judge properly, but Kurt was GREAT! He had the right pose and everything. Brian... well... he is so 'romantically fluent' in his movements, not really a tango guy I think. Yagudin, from what I saw in those few minutes, no. So, to sum up - skating tango programs is DIFFICULT!!! And one thing to add to my previous thoughts - the main problem is, I think, that some music is just way too specific. What do you think people would say, if Yuzu skated to Riverdance? I believe he would do it well. It would be surely beautiful as everything he does, but I think there would be some nasty comments about it. That is just one example. All I wanted to say before is, that such specific music is supposed to present some cultural characteristics to the audience and it sounds strange when someone tells you that one culture will present characteristics from way way too different culture. It is quite hard to pull of. So that's the main problem with biased thinking. People are in a difficult position believing that such thing can be done well.

I see my posts are not very clear. The original post was about culturally distinct music. Not classical music or all music genres. But it doesn't matter, I guess. Everybody is free to read what they want in my posts.

Okay, that is not at all what I said and I would never say that. I am sorry if anyone read this in my posts. I am just overthinking things as always and hoping that others will understand my "research thinking". That said, the original thought was - Yes, I would like to see Yuzu skate some Paso Doble and I know I would very much enjoy it.

I guess it may be a European point of view. We are quite conservetive - not all countries at the same level though. I think some people here simply don't like to see other cultures doing standard European things. It's strange though that no one would ever say that European samurai or ninja or Indian is something strange. Edit: And sorry about the tango. I tend to simplify things when writing.

That's what I meant. And it would be perhaps a wiser desicion not to post it at all, but I feel such things should be said because they are very common. And I am not proud of my preconception. But I know I have such opinions because people are formed by their surroundings and I hear a lot of biased information. That's why I try to actually watch those performances to relieve myself from this bias. So I thought it would be fair to point it out, but only carefully. And to be fair, I only saw Daisuke and Shoma skating to Spanish music so I can't judge all asian skaters. On the other hand, I couldn't stand Plushenko's tango either...

It's just that in these days almost everything you say about other cultures is in many many cases seen as xenophobic, so I am only being careful not to offend anyone.

When Yuzu is invested in a character I happen to somehow ignore his looks. Honestly, I think he could be any character in a Shakespeare play in Elizabethan England and no one would realize he is from modern Japan. (Well... maybe his English would give him away...)

Oh God! You are so right! Now I won't have peace until I see him do a paso... You are so cruel!!!! By the way, maybe it is an unpopular opinion, but I've seen Daisuke skating to Tango de Roxanne and I hated it. I think spanish music (and maybe other culturaly distinctive music) is not very much suited for asian skaters (I don't mean it in a bad way, just my opinion). Ok, Shoma looks kind of good with his new program and I was really surprised to see him like that. So I was quite in shock when I found out that Yuzu skated to Zigeunerweisen and I thought it has to look strange... Then I watched the original and the CiONTU version and I was amazed!!! Yuzu can truly pull off everything! And his 2004 Novice program is the same case for me. How is it possible? He would be able to skate as a blond Disney princess, wouldn't he? No one would even realize he is not at all blond... (Edit: I realize that Zigeunerweisen is not a spanish music. Maybe it is badly written. Those two Yuzu's programs I think belong to the culturally distinctive music choices.)

Any free streams?

Oh, thank you! I haven't watched this.

When was this one? I don't remember seeing it...