Friday, October 8, 2010

Review on Yuna's All That Skate LA Ice Show




The 2010 All That Skate Los Angeles took off on Oct 2, Saturday.

The first U.S. ice show produced by AT Sport, the agency of Yuna Kim— the 2010 Vancouver Olympic gold medalist— was highly anticipated, partly because it featured Michelle Kwan, the five time world champion.

Since Michelle Kwan had steered away to Tufts University, the domestic popularity of the sport waned, and the U.S. figure skating since lost its grip, especially on ladies field, which was highlighted at the recent Vancouver Olympics where the U.S. team failed to earn any medal for the first time for forty years.

The only and hard-found consolation would be a fledgling, Mirai Nagasu of California, the rising teen star with unstoppable glib. But that's not a very promising news per se.

The old glory of the U.S. ladies figure skating has far gone now that Japan dominates the field, claiming the 2010 world championship both in men and ladies, and South Korea looks tall in the international rank by virtue of a single skater, the reigning queen of ice, whose athletic superiority and artistic versatility tops any skaters ever lived in the figure skating history.

If any sliver lining for those who wish to turn the clock back to Kwan's tenure, it's perhaps that the five time world champion has at least come out of her semi-retirement since 2006, even to join Kim's U.S. ice show.

In this joint show of Kwan and Kim, Yuna Kim, who performed Meditation and Bulletproof except her duet with Kwan, rode the pulse of music with the shooting laser beams incorporated into dazzling fireworks and stunning visual effects at her heel.

The great expectation met with no less a quality of what's warranted for the reputation of the 20 year old— an age not even legally permitted to drink— that enables to define the ever evasive meaning of the more-than-a-century old sport.

Kim's Meditation De Thais, greatly applauded since its debut in the Olympics, showed her ever evolving edge in her masterful musical interpretation embedded in her seamlessness— from arm swings to every turn of footwork even to the minutest twigs of finger.

Despite her popped triple toe loop at the beginning of the program, which perhaps indicates a need of choreographic adjustment, Kim enabled to let her muse free of audible boundary and transform it into an illusory embodiment— a crystalline swan floating on the lake of allurement— hypnotizing the unsuspected spectators.

Like the breathtakingly exquisite "unforgettable Scheherazade" or the explosively powerful "immortal Dance de Macabre" that went down to the figure history, Meditation De Thais is another Kim's masterpiece by inducing her body line to transfigure its thematic beauty to cognizant articulation.

Contrary to Kim's Gershwin in the 2010 Olympics, which's often referred to as Kim's ice persona— the quintessential grace— Kim's Bulletproof, which she had performed early this year, shed a light on this megastar's vast reservoir that never seems to run dry in alleviating the audience's insatiable desire for more.

credit to Jesse Helms

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