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ABBREVIATIONS
I have written out most jumps and other elements, but do use standard edge
abbreviations (F forward, B backward, I inside, O outside, L left, R right) and
SBS for side-by-side in the pairs.
Due to my travel plans, I knew I would be missing most of the compulsory dance, and as it turned out I missed all of it. Too bad since I am probably one of maybe five people in the known world who like to watch compulsory dances. :-) For information on the compulsory dances, check out Dave Fraser's page. I also did not see quite as much of the dance practices, missing a great deal of the original dance practice because I was asleep, and missing the first group of the free dance practice because (a) they were going in skate order, (b) I needed to get a roll of film developed to find out if my photos were turning out, (c) I had been at the arena since 6:45 a.m. since I hadn't seen any of the ladies, and was the only "fan" in the building, and (d) I needed to eat something beside popcorn for fear of coming down with scurvy. I will just recount the events of the original dance and free dance and note anything I did catch in practice when applicable.
One quick comment... although I am a big fan of ice dance, I often feel that the more I watch and the more I try to learn about dance, the less I know. :-) It's tough to know what is more important in the "overall picture," but here are some of my quick impressions of the various programs I saw.
First up were Rie Arikawa & Kenji Miyamoto of Japan. He wore a black faux leather jacket with "Elvis" on the back [shudder], faux blue jeans, and bright blue boot covers ... can you guess the music yet? Yep, "Blue Suede Shoes." She wore a blue top and a red poodle skirt. They skated fairly slowly, not a lot in face-to-face holds and some moves done at a standstill. A lot of simple two-foot turns and chassés. Cute program, though; the Asian couples I've seen this year all have a lot of fun with the jive and seem to have a good sense of what a rock & roll number should be like.
Pia-Maria Gustafsson & Antti Grönlund of Finland skated to "Do You Love Me?" in checked blue and black costumes. Transitions were a bit messy, not much use of the beat of the music. A bit tentative and slow. One lift set-down was clunky.
Next up were Nelly Gourvest & Cedric Pernet of France, who skated a rock & roll number sung in French (cool), with some nice pull-throughs and a lot of variety in the choreography. This was a fun, light-hearted number that emphasized lifts and gliding moves more than any real footwork. Good originality, pretty good flow. They wore black and white costumes.
Tae-Hwa Yang & Chuen-Gun Lee from South Korea had a bouncy, fun number to music with a refrain of "I Feel Lucky Today." Good expression, a lot of twizzles (one of which was less than successful near the end of the program). Not much difficulty, but executed well and enjoyable to watch. It didn't look labored or as though they were thinking too hard about what move was coming next.
Lindsay Gough & Jarrod Cook of Australia are of similar size, both fairly short. She wore pink with a grey skirt, while he wore black with grey shoulders and sleeves. They were pretty slow as well, and skated a jive without vocals. He did a semi-splits move at one point, which was pretty cool. They had very little flow in the footwork and she had a tendency to look psychotic instead of exuberant. I noticed in the media guide that one of their coaches or choreographers was listed as Gorsha Sur's former dance partner, Svetlana Lyapina. Another Russian who's taken up residence in Australia?
Next up were my first dancin' Russians, Olga Pogossian & Aleksandr Kirsanov, who skated to "Hound Dog" in fluorescent yellow costumes, his with blue pants. They had some interesting choreography in this number, but did not have a lot of speed or footwork. Again, it was a fun number to watch, but not terribly difficult. Pogossian is quite dark with big brown eyes and an expressive face, while Kirsanov looks a bit like Aleksei Yagudin.
Margarita Toteva & Maxim Chabalin of Bulgaria skated next, doing the first "Great Balls of Fire" of the day in bright blue costumes (his with black pants). They had a nasty fall in the practice where Margarita tripped, fell, and slid into the boards, back first. She skated around the ice a few times with her hand gingerly on her back and then was okay for the session. Everyone was doing those flip-around moves where the guy grabs the woman around the waist and spins her around in a pseudo-cartwheel, and that must have been pretty painful for this young woman's bruised back. This number had a lot of SBS skating, but was cute. At this point in my notes, I felt it necessary to write that there was an older woman sitting a few rows ahead of me who was determined to clap along with every song played.
Sharon Hill & Andrew Hallam of Great Britain, both rather tall, had an entertaining jive to "Blue Suede Shoes" with much milder costumes than the Japanese couple. She wore a dark grey dress, while he had a black top and off-white trousers. His outfit made him look a little like someone who works at J. Crew or The Gap, coming around to ask you if you need any help with anything today. They did not have a lot of flow over the ice and did a lot of SBS skating at an arm's length. Not a lot of footwork. I liked their ending pose, with him balanced with one hand on her shoulder, his free leg up in the air and the skating foot tilted up on the outside edge.
The Austrian couple of Miriam Sinzinger & Ingo Feinerer had fairly awesome costumes for their number to "Jailhouse Rock." His top was a black t-shirt with neon orange tips. So what, you say. Well, his pants and her dress were made of that shimmery silver "hologram" fabric that is usually reserved for wrapping paper. Unfortunately, Miriam fell on the opening pull-through and in general they were a bit clunky, labored, and "un-fun."
Kim Rolloos and Edwin Visser of the Netherlands, both very tall, skated next to the second "Great Balls of Fire" of the day. Edwin has a goatee (personally, I hate goatees, I mean, consider the name!, but it didn't look too terrible on him). Their costumes consisted of the "Kurt Browning Memorial Costume" on Edwin (plain white t-shirt, possibly ribbed, over black jean-like pants), while Kim wore a peach-colored dress. She must be about 5'9", minimum. For a change, this couple had a man who had the "Oksana Grishchuk Perpetual-Orgasm" (hereafter abbreviated as Perpetual-O) facial expression. He fell at the end of the program, which was too bad because they were actually doing a good job with the skill level that they had, with a decent amount of footwork.
Marina Timofejevna & Jevgeni Striganov of Estonia skated to a poor quality recording of "Runaround Sue" in sparkly light green costumes. Both of them are quite adorable; she has a very cute face with a big smile, while he has that "adorkable" goofy look. They were very slow. They were very scrapey. They were obviously going to place last in this competition. Nevertheless, a jive done by a lower level couple is often very enjoyable (and seems to be for the skaters as well). It's the median jives which leave the most to be desired... true also of the senior couples.
Laura Currie (who is indeed the sister of Kim Currie) & Jeffery Smith skated next to music I don't seem to have written down. I was probably stunned by the costumes, which were fairly extraordinarily ugly. He wore the Michel Brunet-esque plaid pants with suspenders and his hair slicked back (which did NOT bring back happy memories of Detroit, thank you very much), while she wore a cadet blue dress. However, this was a very fun jive which was cute and well-skated. They did a dance version of the famous Shishkova & Naumov "flip-up" lift, which worked really well with a jive.
Next up were the couple from Switzerland with the great multi-ethnic names, Viviane Steiner & Flavio Steiner. They wore black and orange and skated to "She's So Fine," quite a different dance from that presented at Skate America by Semyonovich & Fyodorov ;-) (private smirk for those who were in attendance for the latter). The Steiners are both tall and skinny and Flavio may have "ham" potential. They actually looked like they were having fun during this number, which was skated pretty far apart with several separations. Very cute program.
Zita Gebora & Andras Visontai of Hungary skated a jive without vocals, a bit unusual, in black and white outfits which managed to integrate plain fabric, polka-dots, and stripes fairly successfully. Right away you could see that they were a much higher-ranking team than the previous couples, skating with much more flow and control. Zita had one slight stumble and their last move was a bit clunky, but the level of difficulty was the highest thus far and they had some nice footwork in the program.
Natalya Romanyuta & Danil Barantsev of Russia skated next in neon orange (her) and black with matching orange suspenders (him). Both are small and thin, Romanyuta looking a little like Sokolova but more willowy, while Barantsev has the Zaggy pencil-thin body type. They skated to "Good Golly Miss Molly" with a lot of good expression. They are fun and lively to watch and were quite smooth, although lacked a bit in the footwork department. Given some time, I think this team could have some real potential. They are almost the same size. I didn't really notice in the performance (probably because I was busy focusing the camera and not really seeing what I was looking at), but when I got my photographs back I noticed that they are posed with Barantsev behind Romanyuta and his hand apparently placed directly on her chest (Natalya is no Katarina Witt, but she's certainly not in the Tara Lipinski league either). Dobroe utro!!!
Next up were fellow Russians and last year's silver medalists, Oksana Potdykova & Denis Petukhov, who skated a harder-edged rock & roll number to music I didn't recognize (the refrain seemed to have something to do with red Cadillacs) in very cool black and red vinyl costumes. They had good speed across the ice and were very showy, but again, there wasn't that much content. They also had a long stop in one place during the dance. It would have been a tough call for me (in my fantasy world where I have the power to make judging decisions :-)) between them and the Hungarian couple if the latter couple hadn't made a few obvious mistakes. P&P have a dramatic look on the ice, both dark haired and evenly matched in terms of their expression and flair.
The next team, from the Czech Republic, shows some real promise. Gabriela Hraszka & Jiri Prochazka are a tall, attractive couple who work well together on the ice and give the appearance of having skated together for a little while, with good unison and relation to one another. She is dark-haired, while he has long Ilya-esque blond hair ... actually, Jiri looks a little like Mikhail Baryshnikov, if Mikhail Baryshnikov were better looking. (Sorry Misha if you're an avid junior ice dance fan and are reading this). Their jive to "Long Tall Sally" in bright green costumes was a bit scrapey, but had a good amount of footwork.
Kristina Kobaladzhe & Oleg Voiko of Ukraine skated to the "Jive Bunny" (?) remix of "In the Mood," "Rock Around the Clock," etc. that was the long-standing Viktor Petrenko exhibition and then the Oksana Bayul & Viktor Petrenko pseudo-pairs exhibition. They had great costumes, sparkly black and grey with Oleg sporting some faux leather pants. She has long, curly dark blonde hair and looks a bit like Yulya Vorobieva, while Oleg looks like a carefully distilled mixture of Vyacheslav Zagorodniuk and Gwendal Peizerat (a most delectable blend). They had good speed and flow and this was another very enjoyable program.
First to skate in the final group were Melanie Espejo & Michael Zenezini of France ... yes, Michael, not Michel. Are these two really French? He also looked a bit like Zaggy (theme of the day), while she is small, blonde, and ... not built on the same body type model as the Tatyana Navkas of the world. Well, Melanie's costume should assuage any doubts that they were genuine francais, a black and silver outfit with lots of unusual cut-outs, while he wore a super-shiny white shirt tied at the bottom over black pants. Their number, to "Tutti Frutti," was a bit flat and rough on some of the transitions. It looked like they were still negotiating some of the details of the dance.
Next up were Jamie Silverstein & Justin Pekarek of the US skating to "All Shook Up" in pink, magenta and black costumes. They are tiny, and she fell in the warm-up, but they had a strong performance when the time came. They skated with good speed, a well-executed lift sequence, a nice drag move, and very good presentation of the choreography. This didn't have too much content in it, but was very smooth. I was quite impressed with them.
Aleksandra Kauc & Filip Bernadowski of Poland looked adorable and sweet in the warm-up. They had black and white costumes, hers with a polka-dotted froofy skirt and her hair up in two ponytails. Both had endearing smiles on their faces throughout. Their music, however, was "Hanky Panky" by Madonna, with lyrics like "treat me like a bad girl, even when I've been good" and "need a good spanky." The question, of course, is "do they know what these lyrics mean?" There was no mimed spanking at any point in the choreography. ;-)
Jessica Joseph & Charles Butler of the US skated next to the third and final "Great Balls of Fire" of the night (not too bad for 23 couples), Jessica wearing an exact duplicate of the Grishchuk & Platov 1994 free dance costumes in glittery black with a crop top. She also had a serious case of the Perpetual-O expression which was irritating in a program that only lasted about two minutes. They skated with very good speed and presentation, good face-to-face footwork with both changing direction. My one complaint would be that they seemed to have a lot of crossovers. Overall, this was not a particularly captivating dance, but was skated very well.
Last were the Italian couple, Federica Faiella & Luciano Milo. Federica has lovely, shiny dark hair which unfortunately is always in her face. She wore a very low-cut black dress, while Luciano had a white t-shirt with a big "J" on it, over black pants. My first thought was, J is for Jive. Then it was... J is for Jumblies. Then when the music started, I decided that J must be for "Jailhouse Rock." (Sigh). This was an exciting, fun to watch dance with a lot of content. However, I felt that they needed to go a little bit more all-out and they were a bit hesitant in this performance, as though they were afraid to make a mistake. The lifts were decidedly labored. However, the panel of judges (J is for Judges?) gave them a majority of seconds to take the lead going into the free.
The first skaters of the night were Kim Rolloos & Edwin Visser of the Netherlands, who skated to "Die Fledermaus" and "Radetzky March" in shades of green (her in a pale green dress, him in a darker green pseudo-military outfit). They were scrapey and very simple in terms of the footwork. Near the end of the free dance, they did a footwork sequence which was all skated side by side, not in a dance hold, which made me think of our World bronze medalists Bourne & Kraatz. ;-)
Tae-Hwa Yang & Chuen-Gun Lee of Korea skated a Paso Doble to music from "Strictly Ballroom," alternating with a tango section in the middle, in black and red costumes. She had a slight stumble on one of the twizzles. Not too much variety in the holds. Nice expression of the music. They were really pushing to maximize all of their movements, which made this an enjoyable, albeit simple, dance to watch.
Lindsay Gough & Jarrod Cook of Australia skated to various Latin-ized pieces from "Phantom of the Opera," which was just about as awful as it sounds. She wore a white dress while he was in black & white. The opening was soft with lots of lunging type moves, to a weird rhumba version of "Music of the Night." Their dance lifts tended to verge on total disaster, but beyond that I'm afraid that they made very little impression on me and I caught myself glancing up to see how much time had elapsed. Somehow I felt when the dance was over that I had been watching Jarrod's back for the whole dance, and I was sitting directly behind the judges.
Marina Timofejevna & Jevgeni Striganov of Estonia closed out the first group with a polka number in green, white and pale pink costumes. They tended to look as though they had just been partnered about an hour before they skated, not much unison, very slow. Marina's perma-beaming facial expression sold the number, though, and they were pretty adorably bad.
Next up were Viviane Steiner & Flavio Steiner of Switzerland, who skated a cute number to music from "The Lion King." The costumes were sort of a light green colour with almost a leopardskin print on them, to which my delicate sensibilities said, "yes." They are just charming to watch, although my one concern would be that Viviane always seems to have an expression of pain/anguish on her face, including in practice, including while just skating around the ice. Lifts were a bit labored, fairly simple program, skate fairly far apart. Pseudo-Bourne & Kraatz drag move, long separations, not much face-to-face skating. Very peppy, and certainly different. A good number for a very young team.
Pia-Maria Gustafsson & Antti Grönlund of Finland skated to various Latin pieces including "Malaguena," a very poor stylistic choice for them. He wore black & white, while she wore a black dress with gold trim. They seemed to do everything at about 75% commitment level, very slow, tepid expression, lost speed when skating closer together, stiff looking, audience possibly comatose. He looks sort of like the guy in Ace of Base, total Mentos material. This program was just deadly, though.
Miriam Sinzinger & Ingo Feinerer of Austria were up next skating a program beginning with a Charleston, going into cabaret-esque accordion music and then Swing, and ending finally with a light tango. They wore fuchsia and black costumes and were sort of "methodically peppy," which is not as bad as it sounds. Ingo has a sort of inscrutable facial expression which I found rather charming. They had a good amount of footwork, some cute choreography including a nice assisted jump, but a slightly leaden touch. The ending was a bit abrupt.
Sharon Hill & Andrew Hallam of Great Britain skated to "Hey Pachuco," an extremely schmoozy version of "Summertime," and "It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing." Sharon wore a nice black dress with silver stars on it, while Andrew wore a white top, black pants, and a very sparkly black tie. They had okay flow and good sensitivity to the music, and had a pretty enjoyable dance overall. The footwork was fairly simple and they did a lot of SBS skating. What really drove me nuts was the Perpetual-O on both faces. You can't really be that happy. There was something a little terrifying about that fixed, frozen ecstasy on their faces, as though they were about to pull out machine guns and take out the whole Panel o' Nine.
First up in the third group to skate was Rie Arikawa & Kenji Miyamoto of Japan who did a Big Band number in mauve and black outfits. I guess it was Duke Ellington. Boy, am I sick of this music. They skated with nice flow, but did have one clunky lift. Overall, the dance was well-executed but not terribly difficult. Since I have not written anything else down about it and don't remember anything else standing out, my guess is that the choreography was pretty generic too.
My spirits were lifted significantly with the next couple, however. Olga Pogossian & Aleksandr Kirsanov of Russia had a very frantic program all to "Sabre Dance" by Khachaturian. Moreover, what was immediately dubbed the "Aleksandr Abt Memorial Costume" made its way into the arena on the body of Aleksandr Kirsanov. He had a short, cropped red top with big drapey chiffon sleeves over a BARE midriff, worn with loose black pants, while Olga had a similarly scanty red and gold costume with much illusion fabric (and an instant wedgie). Although they were scrapey, P&K skated this number with a lot of speed and expression. There were a lot of split jumps, high kicks, fast steps, and the like, and some quite elaborate lift/hold sequences and transitions. The crowd loved it.
Next up were Nelly Gourvest & Cedric Pernet of France, who had an interesting program to "West Side Story" in red and black costumes. There were a lot of original moves in this number, which occasionally looked awkward instead of intentionally angular, with a high percentage of gliding poses and spiral-type moves. Not a lot of dance holds or footwork. They did a good job of presenting the choreography and had some good highlights in the dance.
Margarita Toteva & Maxim Chabalin of Bulgaria skated next to Latin music, specifically a cha-cha, "Malaguena," etc., in fairly unattractive costumes, which was fine because I seem to remember that the practice costumes were spectacularly ugly instead. They had nice use of the music and steps that were not extremely difficult but were well-executed and done with good unison. Nice lift. Cute number; they work well together as a couple. A couple of long separations, but in general good variety of dance holds.
Next we had another Middle Eastern number, this from the Canadians Laura Currie & Jeffery Smith, who did not challenge for the costume award, wearing tame blue costumes with a bare midriff on the woman only. They skated to the same music Surya Bonaly has used for an exhibition for the last year, called "Incantation." They tended to do crossovers in between the free dance "elements" instead of linking everything together, and in general the dance needed some more face-to-face skating. They had a really well-done and complicated lift transition and there was some interesting choreography in the middle of the program. Not a lot of footwork and despite all the crossovers, fairly slow.
The penultimate group began with Kristina Kobaladze & Oleg Voiko of Ukraine, wearing black and gold and doing "Caravan," "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps" and I think another Latin piece. This number was fast and had lots of footwork. What lifts there were were well-integrated into the rest of the choreography. They tended to do a lot of skating with an arm's length hold when building speed, but in general they had a good amount of difficulty. They were enjoyable to watch and have a good presence on the ice, very evenly matched. A lot of promise for the future, especially since they have the excellent team of Gudina & Kurkudym ahead of them to challenge them after Romanova & Yaroshenko hang it up (Grushina & Goncharov have never made that much impression on me, I guess).
Natalya Romanyuta & Danil Barantsev of Russia skated next, doing yet another Latin number, her wearing a bright pink dress and him in a white top, black pants, and matching pink cummerbund. Nice flow and presentation. Footwork was a bit scrapey and one lift was rather clunky. They look quite young and as though they may not have been together that long. He is just charming to watch, with an infectious smile. I'd love to see this couple in a few years' time (or next year, for that matter :-)), when they have had more time to develop their own style on the ice.
Next up were the "spanky" couple, Aleksandra Kauc & Filip Bernadowski of Poland, who wore black outfits with green trim and did a Quickstep number with "circus" type music at the end, sounds like Nino Rota music. The music suited them; they have a nice flow and lilt to their skating. She did tend to look a little nuts, not Perpetual-O, but sort of a frozen closed-mouth smile. Among the interesting moves was Filip doing an assisted Arabian. They were noticeably slower than the Russian and Ukrainian teams, and had a sort of ineffectual drag move at the end of the program.
Jamie Silverstein & Justin Pekarek of the US skated next to music by Yello, including some pieces recently skated to by Katarina Witt, Aleksei Urmanov, and most similarly but least famously, Wing & Lowe. Costumes were ultra-sparkly blue fabric (his shirt, worn over black pants, and all of her dress beside the illusion fabric). They were sort of spazzy and whenever they threatened to stop skating side by side, they would immediately separate. Fairly stylish presentation. Almost no footwork; at one point a Latin type beat starts up that sounds like "footwork music," but Justin skates on two feet, holds Jamie up with both arms, and she does a scissor-kick move between his legs to the beat of the music. I thought their marks were extremely generous given the lack of technical content. Once again, I seem to know nothing about dance judging!
Gabriela Hraszka & Jiri Prochazka of the Czech Republic skated a tango program, him with major amounts of goop in his hair. He wore a cream-coloured or off-white suit jacket type thing (not as bad as the Oleg Ovsyannikov "lab coat"), while she wore a dark dress which I believe was burgundy (can't tell in the photograph I have... I guess you get what you pay for when you develop your film at Walgreens :-)). They were a bit scrapey and didn't always seem in time with the music. Overall, however, this was a strong program with a lot of difficulty, footwork, holds, face-to-face skating.
First up in the last group were Oksana Potdykova & Denis Petukhov of Russia, who wore incredibly ugly orange and yellow costumes to skate to music from "Pulp Fiction." This was an extremely cool program with multiple Besti-squat maneuvers that would send the loathers of this particular move into grand mal seizures. They had good originality in the program with some very unusual lift sequences, but not that much technical difficulty in terms of some of the footwork. However, what really killed them was their slow and tentative performance. First to skate in the last group, they needed to go all-out and instead skated very hesitantly compared to their last practice run-through. They did manage to get one first-place ordinal.
Next up were Melanie Espejo & Michael Zenezini of France. For some reason, I don't recall their music and don't seem to have it written down anywhere. Hmm?? They wore black costumes with gold trim and had some very cutesy moves in the program, a nice drag with Melanie in full splits, excellent flow with good knee bend throughout. Good speed, a lot of lifts and glides. One nice lift with Michael in a second position plié (alternate terminology that I think Ellyn K. came up with), some OK footwork. Skate a little too far apart on some moves. Very strong performance. Yes, another up and coming French dance team! Wow... some of them may have to start emigrating to other countries and switching nationalities. ;-)
Jessica Joseph & Charles Butler of the US had the second-to-last Latin number of the evening, wearing unusual blue costumes. Hers looked like something an American female singles skater would wear to skate to "Firebird" in, but done in blue. Or like something Rosalynn Sumners (shudder) would have worn back in the early 80's, one of those dresses where the neckline is indeterminate and the upper body is encased in sequins and sparklies and swirly feather-motifs. They were fast and very smooth, tended to skate far apart and do the typical Punsalan & Swallow hand in hand, arm's length apart variety of "dance holds." Lifts were very well-done; crowd loved the pseudo-Bourne & Kraatz move. Not terribly expressive. This dance has been done 1,000 times before and I don't think there was one thing in this particular number I would call original.
I finally bought a copy of the Torvill & Dean autobiography to read on the plane, and laughed out loud when I read Jayne's account of skating in an open-air rink in Germany where it was quite humid and moths would often accumulate, so that the skaters had to be careful to keep their mouths shut when they were on the ice or else they would find themselves ingesting little winged tidbits. I had a mental image of using this rink as a detox center or negative reinforcement clinic for skaters like Joseph or the British team who have problems with recurring Perpetual-O expression.
Federica Faiello & Luciano Milo of Italy were up next skating a tango program, including the Grishchuk & Platov music from last year's original dance, and moreover, lifting their opening move from G&P's program, with Federica wrapping her leg around Milo and spinning around him. She wore a burgundy velvet dress, while he had a black outfit with a vest on top that had a grey colored front. Their program had more originality than Joseph & Butler's, and a lot more close holds and face-to-face skating, and some nice footwork, but one lift was slow and scrapey and Federica fell getting out of a lift near the end of the program, and that was the end of that. She was obviously devastated, but I suppose they have a chance to try their luck again at the Junior Champions Series Final.
Last to skate were the Hungarians, Zita Gebora & Andras Visontai, doing the last Latin program of the day in fuchsia and grey. This was a light, fun program, but I had seen enough Latin numbers at this point in the evening. They had slightly less flow than the top three couples and actually tied with the French team for fourth in the free dance. I think they have a lot of potential; their ending move was cute, she slid down the ice in the splits. Two male Ukrainian officials came and sat behind me for the last group and were speaking in mournful tones (in Russian) after Potdykova & Petukhov skated. I wasn't particularly listening to their conversation, but at some point I heard them talking about Zita Gebora and decided I would definitely tune out anything else they might be saying, because I really didn't want to know what the subject of discussion might be! (She is cute, with short, bushy dark hair and, let's just say, she has a figure).
Overall, I found that the jive was a lot more entertaining to watch than the free dances, and I don't think that was simply because the free dances were twice as long. ;-) The American teams are very polished, but I found J&B boring and S&P lacking the content to back up the showiness. There were some strong dance teams from France, Czech Republic, Ukraine, and Hungary, and all three of the Russian teams here have a lot of potential given some time to develop their style and polish their skating. I have to remind myself that there are at least three excellent Russian dance teams "in between" these three and the four we see at Champions Series competition (namely Sharutenko & Naumkin, Davydova & Kostomarov, and Ulanova & Stifunin). These younger teams have plenty of time on their hands! And as usual, the French and Russian dancers had by far the most original choreography. This was a good event, but really only the top five looked at all ready for senior competition, whereas some of the pairs and women looked more "ready for prime time."