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STANDARD DISCLAIMER
These are my own opinions and observations. I may not always be
100% accurate and my ideas are certainly open to debate and criticism.
I prefer the Russian style of skating and may not be as enchanted with
the "popular favorites" in North America. I hope that these reports are
enjoyable to most readers, but I do not apologise for stating my own
feelings.
Pairs were fairly unexciting. Sargent & Wirtz did "Don't Be Cruel" with some moves from their blues short program. Ina & Dungjen skated their short program. Yeltsova & Bushkov did "I Did It My Way" by Frank Sinatra, with more of the Kazakova flexibility moves. They had also been practicing an Italian song, possibly one that Brian Boitano has skated to (?? it sounded terribly familiar). Woetzel & Steuer skated a new number to "Think" (Aretha Franklin, that is) that was depressingly similar to what one might expect from your average American pairs team. They also did their brief number to "Mission Impossible" from a few years back.
As for the women, Yulya Vorobieva skated a number to an Arabian pop music tune in a lovely green outfit of bra, illusion fabric, and harem pants. She still wasn't landing any jumps, but was the only skater of the day to blur a spin. In practice, she was also trying out an exhibition number to "The Power of Love," which thankfully was not selected. Lucinda did a cute number that worked better for me in practice, where she had been wearing a black bodysuit. Tara skated to "Walking on Sunshine" in a bright yellow dress and was predictably perky. Irina Slutskaya did two numbers, both wearing last year's pink and black short program dress. The first was some sort of conga music that I think Ivanova's used, and the second was the "Macarena." These left a little to be desired, but I find Irina so cute that I didn't mind much.
Ice dance got off to a great start when Margarita Drobiazko & Povilas Vanagas skated their beautiful number to the "Dracula" soundtrack, in bright white costumes. Barbara Fusar Poli & Maurizio Margaglio skated to a ballad in Spanish (I think), complete with some hydroblading moves. I admit that I had the binoc's glued on Mathew Gates and missed a lot of this one. Gwendal Peizerat & Marina Anissina skated their Russian dance number with the bullwhip, which went over well, as usual. The crowd liked them a lot better when they knew that they had the silver medal. The highlight was when Gwendal threw the plastic cup of "vodka" into the audience, and somebody *caught* the cup, still upright in the air! Bourne & Kraatz did some sort of ballad, but I was already in the concourse, as we had to leave to get to the airport shuttle bus and I was determined to skip Elvis Stojko, who was last.
Steven Cousins did a crowd-pleasing Western number. Scott Davis did his usual shtick. Ilya Kulik, meanwhile, performed a number to the "Dream of Love" by Franz Liszt, wearing black velvet trousers and a big white poet shirt. This would have been lovely, except that he was also wearing one black rollerblading knee pad. He had been wearing this in practice, presumably because he didn't want to damage the pants (or the knee) while doing knee slides. I was just a little surprised that he was still wearing it in the exhibition, outside of the pants. Oh well. This was a very expressive program, and I thought it had flashes of beautiful skating, but there were also many times when I felt that he was plowing through the music and sort of beating Liszt to death. It's all good, though, it's all improvement. There was also one very amusing moment in the exhibition practice when Ilya did the last dramatic knee slide to the boards and lifted his arms up to the heavens. Right there at the boards, leisurely stretching and sort of staring into space, was an oblivious Gwendal Peizerat. Finally, Elvis skated two typical Elvis numbers which I did have to sit through in practice, one to Elvis Presley and the other to some heinous heavy metal ballad.