A couple months ago, I sat down to watch the World Figure Skating Championships.
This was my second attempt. Back in March my mom and I had tried to catch N.B.C.’s coverage, but the “skating boom” of the 1990s is ovah, my friends, nobody here cares. The T.V. Guide listing was wrong and so we were left with only skating morsels: the bronze and gold medalists in the men’s event, and maybe the top five ladies. In the halcyon days when little girls played “Nancy and Tonya” and fought over who got to do the whacking, skating was on T.V. every week. Sundays were a broad glassy expanse of silly sponsored “championships”: the Hershey’s Kisses Challenge, the Fox Rock ’n’Roll Championship, the Hallmark Skaters’ Challenge. Ice Wars: The U.S. vs. the World! You could watch Oksana Baiul heaving sensually to Enigma’s “Sadeness Pt. 1,” or Sasha Cohen doing her breathtakingly pretty layback spin for the glory of Keri Lotion. Kurt Browning, on an iced-over movie set gliding through “Singin’ in the Rain”; America’s sweetheart Rudy Galindo, pushing the boundaries of the family hour with a Rocky Horror medley in corset, fingerless opera gloves, and tearaway pants. All of that was on T.V.! Here in the worst timeline, I had to resort to YouTube to piece together as much world-class skating as I could find.
Some of these were official videos—N.B.C. puts up a few
for each Worlds. But mostly these were the illicit uploads which have become
the lifeline of the serious skating fan. Figure skating is famously a marriage
of art and sport. (We and the Russians call it “figure skating,” but the same
discipline in many other languages is “artistic skating.”) The purely technical
elements of the sport have changed dramatically since Dick Button, for
generations the Golden Voice of American figure skating commentary, won Olympic
gold by landing the first ever double axel in competition. Nowadays kids who
get cut before the long program can do moves Button and his competitors didn’t
dare dream of. And yet none of those old scratchy videos, where the champions
give interviews in long-lost Katharine Hepburn accents, have been displaced.
Anybody can do bigger jumps than Peggy Fleming. (I mean, I can’t, but you know what I mean.) But nobody can do a spread eagle,
double axel, spread eagle combination like Peggy Fleming. No man is competitive at the international level today
without a triple axel—and yet no technical advances can diminish the pure
pleasure of Robin Cousins seeming to hang motionless in the air before landing
a perfect single axel. We don’t watch moves. We watch people: expressive,
beloved, unrepeatable.
The technical requirements can seem like a cage for the
artist. After the vote-trading scandal of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics,
when figure skating revamped its whole scoring system (this is why nobody gets
a perfect six point zero anymore), for a while it seemed like every single
skater had to do some awful flailing scramble from one end of the rink to the
other, a required sequence of steps in which arm-waving and fiddly frantic
switches of direction substituted for musicality. But lately people seem to be
settling in to the “new system.” I was excited to see what the men could
do—and, more important, who they would be, out there alone at center ice.
I started with Vincent Zhou, an American who medaled at
the previous Worlds but muffed his short program so badly that he D.N.Q.’d for
the long. There are three parts to the World Championships, two of them
competitive: the short program, whose top twenty-four skaters qualify for the
long program, and then the gala exhibition, where the top and/or most fun skaters
get to show what they can do with no points and no judges. Zhou didn’t make the
cut not because he’s a mediocre skater, but because he’s an extraordinary one.
At the U.S. National Championships he skated a gorgeous, complex, light short
program where he landed a quad lutz with his arms over his head—a ridiculously
difficult jump, just about the hardest thing they’re doing these days. His
program had no blank spaces, no caesura where the skater is catching his breath
or trying to sneak up on his next jump. His long program, which he didn’t get
to show at Worlds, would’ve had a sinister vibe, a throwback to the late-aughts
era of spooky Euro-oddballs like Kevin van der Perren.
But recent changes to the scoring system impose a hefty
penalty for trying a jump you can’t land: falling costs you a full minus five
in what’s called “grade of execution.” This may keep championships from
becoming just cavalcades of falling, which audiences hate. Spectators want a
few falls here and there—few things are as piquant as somebody else’s physical
risk—but if everybody tries a quad and most of them fall down on it, we never
get to see a clean, elegant program. Competitions devolve into car crashes with
music in the background.
At the coda of Zhou’s short program, portraying Vincent
Van Gogh (yes, “Vincent,” it’s on the nose, that’s skating), he’s first defiant
and then saddened by fear that he will never convince anyone that his art is
meaningful. After a fall and several other mistakes, it’s immensely poignant.
Then Zhou clumps over to the “kiss and cry”: the rinkside area where coaches
comfort or kvell over their skaters as they await the scores. In 2021, skater
and coach sit on fake ice blocks a mandatory six feet apart. It’s a cold way to
find out your championship is over.
After Zhou I munched through some lower-ranked skaters
who made it to the long program. Boyang Jin, a World medalist and five-time
Chinese national champion who in the past had offered jumping drills with
bare-necessity choreography, here tries out a delicate angularity, like one of
those water-skimmer insects. I couldn’t find the competitive programs of
Donovan Carrillo, but he got to skate in the gala because he’s one of a handful
of skaters ever to represent Mexico at Worlds; he portrays a robot, electrocuted
into life, who becomes a mariachi singer. (I think.) He’s a crowd-pleaser even
in the absence of a crowd.
Italy’s Matteo Rizzo places eleventh, skating his long program to “The Greatest Showman.” He’s strong, he stands up on two quad toes, but the bland music makes his skating seem truly generic. Soundtrack skating is the worst American export since the A-bomb. Anyway thanks, Italian Todd Eldredge, you have pretty eyes. Jun-hwan Cha’s short program occasionally brushes the music with its choreography but doesn’t cling. In the long, Cha is perfectly serviceable until—until! Until he swoons into a huge layback Ina Bauer, swerving across the ice with his spine arcing backward like he’s got the Spirit. After that he’s musical all the way to the end. His costume includes the subtly insane touch of gloves that almost match his flesh tone but not quite, so he looks like he has mannequin hands. Tenth place.
The Russian team can’t call themselves that, as
punishment for doping and evidence-tampering. They compete as “F.S.R.” and if
any of them win they’ll play Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. One instead of
the national anthem. This may seem a bit “Don’t punish me with a good time!”,
but the ardent voice with which the Russian commentator says, “Now we begin to
worry and to desire success,” when one of them steps out onto the ice, suggests
that the blow to national honor does sting. The Russian commentator is hugely
invested in Evgeni Semenenko’s performance, but unfortunately Semenenko has the
Russian tic of silly arm-waving. He’s fine, he’s ninth, whatever.
Never whatever, always what what, next up is Jason Brown, with choreography by the velvet genius Rohene
Ward (look up his “A Journey to Solace” program sometime, after the kids are in
bed), skating his short program to Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman.” And here’s the
thing. Brown’s “Sinnerman” has been wildly popular among skating fans, and it
deserves it. Every second is something different, something wild and new. His body stretches like Gumby; every edge is
deep and clean, every step meets the music and takes it further. But . . . this
is a song about a sinner hiding from God’s wrath. Nina Simone is an apocalyptic
thundercloud flashing warning, pity, and scorn. And meanwhile here’s happy,
bouncy Jason Brown. He used to have this iconic silly ponytail, and he’s
finally cut the thing, but spiritually he still skates like he’s got it. I respect this skate immensely but
it’s missing some necessary undercurrent of fear or threat. Compare this to
Christopher Bowman’s weird gala skate at 1989 Skate America, where he keeps
covering his face and winding his body into strange shapes of shame, or Rudy
Galindo’s malevolent, campy Swan Lake free skate at 1996 Nationals. Brown’s long program, to “Slaughter on
Tenth Avenue,” isn’t as compulsively exciting as “Sinnerman,” and yet I like it
more—he’s light and musical and flowing, he’s got great transitions into his
big moves, and he’s not trying to be a Graham Greene character. He ends up
seventh. For somebody who’s never landed a clean quad in competition, that’s
spectacular. Quads below him, a dizzy spinning array of quads ahead of him, and
in the middle just Jason Brown, skating beautifully, deep and clean and clear.
I can only find the long program for Keegan Messing,
who’s represented America in the past (he trains in Alaska, where he was born)
but now skates for Canada. It’s to G’n’R’s “November Rain,” and he’s decked out
in this sparkly black sweater thing, and he makes the pained Air Guitar Face
all the way through his program. And you know what? I really dig it. There’s no
wasted moment. He does all these catlike landings with his knees bending deep,
he’s got a fun variation on a sit spin where he looks like he’s doing the
stereotypical “Slav squat” while spinning, and he does a super hydroblade, a
move where his face gets so close to the ice he must feel it breathing on him.
He’s got a great big move where he sort of windmills his legs as he jumps, with
his torso parallel to the ice, which I think is called, in the intermittent
poetry of skating, a butterfly. Skating terminology is hard.
Now another flagless Russian, Mikhail Kolyada. Man, this
guy looks more Russian than Tarkovsky’s God. Anyway, his short program is
prancey and louche, fingers snapping. His long is a lovely Nureyev tribute,
with a balletic opening and an atmosphere of delicacy and longing. And also,
you know, two clean quads. Shoma Uno gives a fun short program with long loping
edges and another great butterfly (I think). Then his long is one of those very
accomplished programs where the athletic skill outpaces the emotional or
artistic connection. I’d put Jason Brown ahead of this even though you just
can’t.
Yuzuru Hanyu took bronze here, which is one of those
moments that make you think about what it means to “lose” a skating
competition. Hanyu is a two-time Olympic men’s champion—the first since Dick
Button, back when Truman was president. Hanyu has often failed to “put two
clean programs together,” as they say, but it rarely matters, because he has
been the total package for a long time: art and sport, soul and science. This
year he says he wants to do a fun skate, because it’s been such a miserable
year, so he gets out there in studded black faux-leather and skates to “Let Me
Entertain You,” and it’s beyond anything else we’ll see. This program is packed
with complex choreography, and he handles it all with a pro’s relaxation and
even a hint of comic seduction. For his long he’s in a pastel costume, and the
ethereal choreography risks seeming desultory once the jumps start to fall
apart. Hanyu pulls it together on the artistic side, following the
choreography’s plotline. When he finished I was surprised that the skate had
flashed by so fast. Hanyu has taken gold with messy programs before—most
notably at the Sochi Olympics in 2014, where he won despite falling twice. But
there’s essentially no ceiling on the technical score, except for whatever
ceiling our Creator has placed on the human capacity to land jumps. You can’t
win the World Championships without athleticism; you can win without artistry.
And so, it’s a relief to watch the silver medalist,
Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama (in his senior Worlds debut, good grief), and see a
floppy, pleasingly ragged quality to his skating—a hint of youthful wildness
which the veteran Hanyu has inevitably outgrown. If Hanyu is the pro, Kagiyama
is the promise: clean quads, deep knees, deep edges, not necessarily much of a
point of view yet but enough skill and joy to make you excited for the future.
Now, at last, I reach the top: Nathan Chen, a Yale man.
Chen won hearts—and earned himself years of pressure, no doubt—with a
delightful gala skate at the 2010 U.S. Nationals, where he interpreted Peter and the Wolf with himself in both the titular roles. He was ten years old and he made
his hands into wolf claws, and now he is the king of technical skating; now he
has an Olympic bronze and five U.S. titles and three World titles; now he can
call his memoir Quad and Man at Yale. (Sorry.) He stumbles in the
short program, with one fall, and it gets a bit “business in front, party in
the back,” with the artistry coming out only in the second half. His long
program is skated to selections from Philip Glass, although while listening I
found myself thinking they were the most soundtrack-y Philip Glass selections
I’ve ever heard. (I later learned that part of Chen’s music was in fact from
the score of The Truman Show.) The technical content is unbelievable, he hits five
quads and misses nothing—but there’s also a step sequence which hints at a
dreamy lyricism, as he leans backward and lets the music pull him around the
ice. His final step sequence is quite musical but in that “Be! Aggressive! B-E
aggressive!” way skaters get, every song a fight song.
Chen gets the highest P.C.S. scores, very rough
equivalents of the old artistic mark. He gets nine and sixty-eight hundredths
out of ten for “interpretation of the music.” Is he really a greater artist on
the ice than Brown, Kolyada, Hanyu? Well, everything’s beautiful when you land
your jumps. “Drink it in,” the British lady commentator suggests; her male
counterpart says, “I am standing as I’m applauding.”
I was thrilled. I was awed. But I was also grateful for
all those illicit uploads, from the Sixties down to the present, in which
skaters who couldn’t rely on their double axel still leap and swirl in triumph.
I’ve been to Nationals twice now and I know that there’s an electricity—a
Dionysian rapture—to live skating, which video can never match. But learning
fandom through video, you get to see skating as an art. Some of my favorite
skaters never medaled at the Olympics: Johnny Weir, Christopher Bowman. Some
never had a realistic chance of it: Lucinda Ruh, the Swiss “Queen of Spin,”
clad in bizarre alien bodysuits as she turns herself into a flower, an insect,
a regret, an ecstasy; Gary Beacom, who wears special soft skates for
disturbing, oozy moves which seem to defy the laws of physics. Video trains you
to see figure skating as a Wunderkammer, where the purpose of each exhibit is simply to be as much itself as
possible. How can you judge a narwhal horn against a woodcut of the Ascension?
There’s no Code of Points on video—just the long, tightening spiral or the
rising feet.
At Nationals this year, the Americans skated for an
audience of cut-out figures, including the Geico gecko. At Worlds the
competitors had one another, and their coaches, and a blank blue dome with fake
ice blocks and fake trees. And the judges. But beyond the judges, the long
loving afterlife of YouTube and Vimeo, the paradoxical video heaven where every
step is at once forgiven and preserved.
Eve
Tushnet’s most recent book, Tenderness:
A Gay Christian’s Guide to Unlearning
Rejection and Experiencing God’s Extravagant Love,
will be published in November by Ave Maria Press.