As you know by now, vocals are now permitted in
all figure skating programs for the first time ever in Olympic competition.
Following a precedent set with ice dance two decades ago, all the young men and
women representing one of 32 different countries took Olympic ice this month
with the option of using, well, just about any piece of music they (and their
coach and/or choreographer) chose.
The (ISU) first allowed vocals in its 2014-15
season, so athletes have had this entire four-year “Olympic cycle” to get
comfortable with this seismic shift in the sport. Consequently, audiences are
treated to plenty of music that was previously restricted to exhibition
(non-competitive) skating, if it was used at all. Whether it’s the familiar
late-70s Kansas
Nonetheless, audiences are still seeing some
competitors skating to selections from George Bizet’s Carmen. They’re
still hearing the powerful strains of Puccini’s Turnadot. How about Phantom
of the Opera, Romeo & Juliet and Rhapsody in Blue? Yes,
yes and yes. They continue to be incredibly well-represented, some both in
instrumental and vocal variations.
With so many more options now, you might wonder…
why is this still the case??
Consider this theory of mine which involves
music, but not the pieces mentioned above—think instead of “Summertime” and
“Satisfaction”; of “Imagine” and “Yesterday.” Classics that have been recorded
over and over through the years, by a seemingly endless variety of artists.
Some covers of the original version become the “definitive” version of a song.
Others are utterly forgettable. Most fall somewhere in between.
Skating’s a lot like that. Sure, the Soviet
pairs team of Ludmilla and Oleg Protopopov cast a spell over audiences when
they skated so elegantly to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” in the 1968 Grenoble
Winter Games…
But that didn’t stop 2006 Olympic Silver
Medalist Sasha Cohen from using it in a bid to make the 2010 Olympic team, and
it didn’t keep French ice dancers (and now Olympic Silver Medalists) Gabrielle
Papadakis & Guillaume Cizeron from trying to cast a whole new spell at
these Olympic Games with the same music, some 50 years later.
Also at the 1968 Olympic came future Olympic
Bronze Medalist Janet Lynn skating to Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of
a Faun-- a piece of music she used so many times through the years it
became almost synonymous with her…
But Adam Rippon took it on during the 2013-14
season, and 2014 Olympic Bronze Medalist Carolina Kostner brings it to
PyeongChang ice in this, her fourth Olympics.
Sure, it can seem like skaters are trying to
reinvent the wheel with each new interpretation of The Classics. But think of
Ray Charles giving The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” his own unique flavor of soul...
Think of Janis Joplin taking a turn
with Gershwin's "Summertime"...
Who, you ask? Why he’s the Hawaiian performer who took “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” somewhere it’s never been before. He passed away way too soon—at age 38 in 1997, one year before his cover became a long-term staple in TV, films, and commercials—but his creative legacy is secure thanks to his unique version of that pop standard.
Granted, for every Iz Kamakawiwo’ole there are dozens of
singers who do well to simply carry the melody of “Rainbow”. But at this Olympics
alone there are four women (to say nothing of any other discipline) using some
incarnation of Carmen for one of their programs. Will they leave a
lasting impression a la 1984 & ’88 Olympic Gold Medalist Katarina Witt, or
(much more recently and remotely) Samantha Cesario of the U.S.
Or will their interpretation be
more like Carmen Karaoke?
If current trends are any indication, we’ll get to keep
asking these questions for many more years down the road. And with one Olympic ice dance team skating to one of the
most-performed songs of the 20th Century (according to BMI)…
And with
THREE Olympic skaters/skating teams using TWO different versions of this
Leonard Cohen original…
It looks
like figure skating better make room for a whole new kind of warhorse in the
stable.
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