On Tuesday, a show by an honored coach took place in St. Petersburg Russia Eteri Tutberidze. A Sport correspondent visited the stop of the star tour in the Northern capital and shared his impressions of what happened both on and off the ice.
Return to traditions Ice shows have become fashionable in our country over the past couple of decades. The trend was set by Ilya Averbukh, who, in parallel with the arenas, “enveloped” the television space with his iconic “Ice Age”, then the idea was picked up by Tatyana Navka and Evgeni Plushenko. And as a result, the three currently leading production centers regularly delight figure skating fans with high-profile premieres — “Carmen”, “Sleeping Beauty”, “Snow Maiden” and many other performances thunder on the largest stages in Russia.
The scale of investment and the scope of productions performed by Averbukh, Navka and Plushenko seem to leave no chance for competitors to fight for their piece of the pie. But this is if you follow the path of transferring theatrical plots to ice. Another spring in figure skating is already taking place under the banner of Eteri Tutberidze’s show, which is built on a completely different principle. This is a return to the tradition of classic demonstration performances in figure skating — not connected by any thematic thread. But nevertheless, they always attracted interest.
It’s hard to believe now, but there were times when it was impossible to get tickets to exhibition performances in our country. This is how two-time Olympic champion Evgeniy Platov spoke about them in an interview: “Now it’s all on schedule, but then it was like this: if you perform with one number, you’re nobody. If they call you and you skate two numbers to different music, you’re already cool «If you go out for the third time, you're a star. Well, four times is already the lot of the greats. Exhibitions could last three, four hours! And at the end, when it was all over, no matter what the guys did, people went crazy!»< br>Stars of the past and present Of course, the secret to the success of such shows — or, indeed, it is more accurate to call them exhibition performances — is the stars. Eteri Tutberidze is all right with them — the honored coach of Russia gathered that evening those who, under her leadership, achieved the most resounding successes in their careers — completed, paused or active. Olympic champion Alina Zagitova, vice-champions of the Games Evgenia Medvedeva, Alexandra Trusova, Evgenia Tarasova/Vladimir Morozov, Russian champion Adelia Petrosyan…
There were also invited participants: it was hardly possible to imagine demonstration performances in St. Petersburg without the city’s favorite figure skater Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, Pyotr Gumennik, Anastasia Mishina and Alexander Gallyamov. Vice-champions of the Beijing Games in ice dancing Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov demonstrated their performance. Two-time Russian champions Alexandra Boykova and Dmitry Kozlovsky, as well as Andrey Mozalev, who recently moved to Moscow to join Tutberidze, also performed in front of the St. Petersburg public. Finally, the younger generation of the honored coach’s group was represented by Margarita Bazylyuk, Alisa Dvoeglazova and Arseny Fedotov — young, but already oh so skilled guys.
And even before the show started, it was clear who the main stars were in this company. In the foyer of the Yubileiny Sports Palace, the sale of merchandise from those who have the most substantial armies of fans was in full swing. So, a life-size cardboard figure of Alina Zagitova beckoned to the counter, where clothes and souvenirs were laid out with the phrase “believe in yourself” laid out in Japanese hieroglyphs. It was impossible to miss the shop with equipment from Alexandra Trusova, as the song “Two Wings” performed by her on repeat was heard from there. Finally, a table with merch from Evgenia Medvedeva was located slightly away from the main retail space, but fans also crowded around it, wanting to replenish their collection with items with the symbols of their favorite.
They work further. The show, according to tradition, began with a presentation of the participants, which was conducted by the “chief of the artistic department” in the Tutberidze group — choreographer Daniil Gleikhengauz. And then the action began, which for active athletes can probably be called something like a report on the work done — it’s not for nothing that Eteri Georgievna loves this word so much. Young people, understandably, were pushing for jumping — what they are most strong at, although «Swan Lake» performed by Arseny Fedotov also amazes with its artistic power. Adelia Petrosyan performed her brightest short program “Michael Jackson”, and in the second part she demonstrated an amazingly deep composition to the song Mad World, which can probably be called the beginning of the creative maturation of the best figure skater in Russia.
Well, those who paused or stopped the competition chose ways to amaze the public according to their taste. Tuktamysheva went out on the ice in a closed jumpsuit, which led to the idea that this was not without reason. And so it turned out — Lisa completed the number without outerwear, but with an umbrella. Trusova performed two numbers, one of which, as the host of the evening Maxim Trankov noted, became a “annealing” both in the literal and figurative sense — at some point sparks fell from under the skater’s skates. Mishina and Gallyamov repeated their “12 chairs” from the Russian Challenge show program tournament, with which they won the Media Choice Award. Boykova and Kozlovsky in the first part entertained the audience with “The Pink Panther”, and in the second they came out with a strong “Swan Lake”…
It would be too trivial to evaluate the performances of Alina Zagitova and Evgenia Medvedeva from the perspective of their confrontation, which excited the sports world more than five years ago. But perhaps this is not as simplistic as it might seem. After all, every athlete remains one even after the end — or, let's be precise, the suspension — of his career. And if a star of such magnitude as the gold and silver medalists of the 2018 Olympics takes to the ice, it’s clearly not just to skate around.
Well, if we talk about the jumping part, then it’s a draw — triple jumps what at Zagitova, that at Medvedeva they went into “step-outs”. But let each viewer evaluate the strength of the artistic impact of the performances of these figure skaters for himself. What can be said for sure is that both give their all to communicating with the public: Alina in her sensual blues and warlike dance to “House of Flying Daggers”, and Zhenya with an incredibly tender number, which Trankov called the most “spring” of all that were performed this evening.
Now the participants of the Tutberidze show are moving to Moscow, where they will perform on Friday. But before leaving Yubileiny, all the participants took to the ice, including Eteri Georgievna herself. Under the applause of the public who did not want to leave the hall, the singles skaters staged a jumping battle, Boykova and Kozlovsky tried to perform a quadruple throw, and the coach watched this, probably pronouncing the motto of her group. «Let's keep working!»
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