![]() Succeeding at keeping one’s balance in a treacherous environment is the theme of Solange and the skater alike, and it’s an added bonus that you can time the flight of a triple jump to the titular refrain. The vigorous yet delicate sound in “Overcome” suggests a winding lateral motion, precisely the kind of energy skaters can make use of.Ĭhalk it up to the cold Canadian weather or whatever, but Grimes’ forward-thinking artistry is a great fit for the artistry in ice skating.Įxactly the kind of dance music - strong but understated - well-served by a translation to dancing over ice. Tricky’s Maxinquaye is an album all about pressure, but grace under pressure is no less important. Only good things can happen when fantasies on ice hook up with Fantasy, right? ![]() Pretty much all of Channel Orange can and should go on ice, but we’re singling out this song because of the potential to synchronize a quad-jump with the line about a tornado. The gracefully somber pianos and the absence of strong rhythm create a gliding effect for an expert skater to mirror. It’s entirely possible that skaters jumping under the influence of Future’s highest-flying love song will gain some extra hang time to complete their spins.Įrykah is almost always cool, but the one song where she loses her cool turns out, paradoxically, to be a song quite worthy of being treated on ice. The second track on Born to Die is just the best example of many: with its effortless shifts in tone and pace coupled with a ready melody, skaters have everything they need to complete them. Though anything but cold herself, Lana makes a lot of music that turns out to be perfect for low-temperature skating. (Exhibitions had always been a different matter: witness East German legend Katarina Witt’s rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Bad” way back in 1988.) With that in mind, and also perhaps out of a desire to avoid more Beatles songs and “Hallelujah” on ice, we compiled a list of 25 songs that are both great on their own and ideal for figure-skating performances. Pop music is just beginning to expand its presence in figure skating: It was only in 2014 that the International Skating Union, which governs the sport, permitted the use of songs with lyrics in competitive routines. Figure skating, with its special conjunction of dignity and swift motion, naturally calls for parallel sonics: when French pair skaters Vanessa James and Morgan Cipres chose the Weeknd’s waltz-like “ Earned It” for their routine last year, it was clearly an inspired choice. ![]() What works best is music whose power is phrased with smoothness and delicacy. The lumbering 808s of trap the knotty, sober poetry of classic hip-hop the sizzle of classic rock and roll the abrasive charge of punk the serrations of metal the ironic reserve of college rock - however effective in their native settings, they all fall flat on the well-lit ice. One could add much else to the list of musical traits that make poor complements for skating. Certain modes of music just don’t harmonize with the act of gliding over, and spinning above, a frozen surface, a fact well illustrated by current American Olympian Jimmy Ma, who scored a routine to DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s dissonant, spastic club anthem “ Turn Down for What.” It turned out that, no matter how graceful Ma’s motions were on ice, the rancorous fizzles of the more brutal variants of EDM couldn’t resonate with them. Who could imagine a routine conducted entirely in silence? Yet there are limits to the sort of music that gets played. What could only serve as a distraction in other sports turns out to be a necessity in skating. The presence of music, which pursues a similar trance-like state of mind, is a leading sign of figure skating’s status as an art. ![]() Figure skaters are athletes, but they’re also artists, people who consciously represent an ideal sensibility, and witnessing their fall has the same disorienting quality as being wrenched out of a dream. But when a figure skater slips, it’s always ugly. There’s a sense of disappointment but no sense of ugliness. ![]() When a skier crashes or a speed skater falters, it’s purely a failure of the body. Invented by a New York City ballet dancer in the 19th century and popularized and formalized in continental Europe, figure skating, in its motions and presentation, enhances the sublime experience of intense athletic competition with the expression of grace in fragility - what people generally refer to as beauty. Among all the sports at the Winter Olympics, figure skating is the strangest and the most distinct: unlike the others, there’s a unique element of fine art inscribed into its history. ![]()
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